Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts like most of their troubles do: with good intentions.

“Two days,” Roberto says as he gets into the truck. “I’m asking you not to do anything stupid for two days . Think you can manage that, Rookie?”

After some deliberating, they decided she’d stay with Vash and Wolfwood in the small village on the far outskirts of November while Roberto took care of some official things back at the HQ. The closer to the city proper they get, the more risk of someone recognizing Vash and his six million price tag, hence they will be hunkering down in this dilapidated little place nestled among tall rock formations. There is practically nothing here aside from a couple rackety houses, a thomas ranch and abandoned cave systems filled with worms. Meryl doubts the population breaks thirty. 

She leans against the open truck door with a huff, “I don’t think we could find any trouble around here even if we went searching for it.”

“If there’s anyone who can, it’ll be the three of you dolts…” Roberto says tiredly before shooing her away from the door so he can close it. The engine rumbles to life and he rolls down the window to give her one last stern look. “Two days.”

“Yeah, yeah, just go already before it turns into three,” Meryl shoots back with a roll of her eyes. She watches the truck disappear slowly on the horizon, framed by the last rays of their setting suns. 

There is no inn at the village but Meryl managed to convince the owner of the ranch, a kind-looking woman that seemed to be in her fifties, to let them stay at her place in exchange for their remaining money and a promise to help around with some chores. Apparently, she has an empty room left over after her sister’s passing several years ago. It’s big for one person, small for three, but Meryl is used to sharing cramped sleeping quarters at this point. 

Overall, the next two days promise to be quiet and peaceful. They’re going to stay in their room bored out of their minds, probably shovel some thomas dung and be on their way once Roberto comes back. 

At least that’s what Meryl thinks until she enters the ranch house and is met with the worried expression of Miss Hawthorne, the owner. Behind her she can see Wolfwood stirring something in a large pot on the stove that smells heavenly, a dish rag slung over his shoulder. Vash is sitting at the kitchen table, occupied by one of Miss Hawthorne’s children, listening intently to the boy as he explains the inner workings of what appears to be a hand-made snap trap. His mother approaches Meryl.

“I’m sorry, sugar, but you didn’t happen to see my Bianca out there, did you?” she asks with a nervous chuckle, hands wringing through her long ponytail. “Brown hair, blue overalls, won’t sit still for longer than a second? Can’t miss her.”

“Ah, I’m sorry, I don’t think I have,” Meryl says apologetically. The woman in front of her sighs with a shake of her head.

“I swear that girl will be the death of me…” she murmurs.

“I could go looking for her?” Vash offers without a second of hesitation. Wolfwood shoots him a dirty look from his place at the stove. 

“You don’t even know the place.”

“It’s small enough,” Vash shrugs, already making his way to the door. 

“I’ll come with,” Meryl adds, patting at her jacket to make sure her flashlight is still there as Vash laces up his boots. “Make sure he doesn’t get into any trouble.” 

Wolfwood frowns at her, arms crossed as he leans against the kitchen counter. “I feel like that doubles his chances, actually,” he scoffs.

Miss Hawthorne chooses to ignore the remark, instead looking at them hopefully.

“That’d be mighty kind of you. Bianca usually litters around the caves to the south of here. Likes the bugs, you see. Probably lost track of time chasing the critters around.”

“Got it,” Vash says with a smile. “We’ll get your daughter back in no time, Miss Hawthorne.” Meryl nods resolutely next to him.

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

“Be careful!” Wolfwood shouts as they leave and Meryl rolls her eyes, hooking an arm around Vash’s prosthetic and dragging him out with her. 

“Oh, come on. What’s the worst that can happen?”

The worst that can happen, it turns out, is human traffickers. 

The two of them spent an hour looking around the village, asking at any of the houses that actually had people living inside and calling Bianca’s name into the mouths of the shallow caves before Meryl proposed going back to check if she’s come back home already and they simply missed each other. Vash agreed but stopped when his eyes focused on something too far in the distance for her to really see. A second later he was pulling Meryl along towards what she eventually made out to be a wooden cabin, old but sturdy. Judging by some of the tools resting against its side it was once used by miners.

“Looks like some sort of storage shed,” Meryl says as Vash urges her down against a sand dune overlooking the cabin. He shushes her, pressing his finger against his lips and then motioning to a small rock formation to the left of the cabin. Meryl strains her eyes in the dim of the evening and catches a flash of metal glinting among the dusty rocks. 

“Is that a bike?” she whispers, eyes jumping back to Vash, whose expression has turned grave.

“Bikes,” he corrects. “At least three of them.”

Meryl’s eyes slide back to the cabin. Her hand rests momentarily on the holster of one of her derringers hidden under her coat. “You think Bianca’s in there?”

Vash hesitates before nodding. “I can hear voices inside. I… I’m pretty sure there’s someone crying too. Someone young.”

“Okay,” Meryl says, feeling her stomach twist with anxiety. She isn’t scared of a shootout, especially with Vash by her side, but a shootout with a child potentially being held hostage is a different matter. “Should we go grab Wolfwood?”

Vash shakes his head, unholstering his gun. “They might be gone by the time we’re back,” he says. Meryl watches him load bullets into the chamber without even looking. “And his fighting style isn’t exactly subtle. We’ll want to sneak the girl out, preferably. Don’t give them a chance to use her as a hostage.”

Meryl hums in agreement, side-eyeing Vash with interest, the determined set of his jaw, the no-nonsense tone of his voice. It’s easy to forget that while he’d never deliberately hurt people, Vash is every bit as capable of it as the wanted posters claim. Meryl has also seen him reduced to a content, purring puddle in her own lap while she scratched at his scalp, so she may be a little biased. 

“You distract them, I look for Bianca?” she proposes with a quirked brow.

“Yup,” Vash agrees and snaps his gun closed with a click. He flips the safety on before holstering it again and turning to Meryl. “Do you have your guns?”

She takes out both of her derringers, fitting nicely in each of her palms. 

“Atta girl,” Vash praises with a smile, some of that familiar levity returning to his words. “I’ll try my best to make sure you won’t have to use these.” 

“Don’t try too hard, okay? I don’t want you getting shot for no reason,” she huffs back, well acquainted at this point with Vash’s tendency to jump in front of stray bullets. 

“No promises,” he shoots back and before Meryl can say anything else he’s jumping over the sand dune, red cloak flapping behind him as he slides down. She sighs, steels herself and jumps after him. 

They make it all the way under the door of the cabin unnoticed and this close Meryl can hear the voices coming from inside. She cannot quite make out the individual words but based on the way Vash’s hand clenches around his gun, he has no issues with it. He leans against the wall, listening, face pinched in concentration and after a minute or so turns to Meryl, mouth close to her ear as he whispers.

“Back of the room, to the left.”

Meryl licks her dry lips, fingers tingling with nerves and nods. Vash gives her a final reassuring smile and swings the door open. 

“Hi there, fellas!” he calls out, not a trace of hesitation in his voice as he steps slowly inside with both of his hands up, boots loud against the floorboards. He kicks the door behind him, making sure it stays wide open for her.

Meryl’s jaw tightens when she hears several voices raise up in immediate threats, followed closely by the familiar click of a gun’s safety coming off on several different firearms. She tries her best to tune out the people and focuses on calming her breath as she peeks her head inside of the room while Vash’s coat is still mostly obscuring the entrance. 

The inside of the cabin is filled with dust, dirt and wooden furniture in various stages of rotting. The three men they heard from the outside are standing at the ready on the right side of the room around a circular table on which lay an array of empty beer bottles and what appears to be an abandoned game of cards. Their rifles are trained squarely on Vash who has an easy smile on his lips, arms still in the air and gun holstered. 

“Poker, huh? I’m not too shabby myself. Care if I join you for a round, gentlemen?”

A shot rings out, followed immediately by the sound Meryl has learned to mean it ricocheted right off of Vash’s prosthetic. She uses the brief scuffle to sneak her way in, crouched low to the ground and for once thankful for her small size as she fits herself behind a stack of boxes on the left to where Vash is standing. He continues to idly chat with the men but Meryl barely hears the words, her attention completely taken over by what she sees several feet in front of her: brown hair, blue overalls and big, scared eyes that match her mother’s. 

Bianca is curled up against a stack of boxes, hair and clothes messy and tear tracks shining on her face. Her arms and legs are tied and there’s a piece of cloth in her mouth, acting as a gag. She can’t be older than eight. 

The girl meets Meryl’s eyes, her own wide and terrified and she feels anger boil low in her gut, all traces of her own nerves momentarily gone. She grabs her derringer with renewed determination and carefully makes her way over. Vash has gravitated towards the right side of the room, all three men’s focus on him and away from Meryl as she reaches the girl and takes the cloth out of her mouth, pressing a comforting hand to her small shoulder, the other coming up to her lips to signal her to be quiet. Bianca nods shakily in understanding. 

Meryl unties her while listening to Vash’s fake, cheery tone and the men’s answering voices, ranging from confused to angry. There are red, angry belts on the skin where the rope was wrapped around it and Meryl fights the urge to take out her derringers and just start shooting.

Instead she takes Bianca’s trembling hand in her own, gives her a reassuring smile and gently pulls her back towards the entrance. The second they’re away Vash will be able to knock all of those guys out without even breaking a sweat, she just has to give him the opportunity to do so. 

Meryl swallows, her heartbeat resounding in her ears louder than any gunshot she’s ever heard. They’re passing over an especially exposed section of the room when she feels Bianca sway sharply behind her, foot twisting as she misses a step and lets out a quiet whimper.

Meryl freezes as one of the men turns to look straight at them followed by the other two. She sees Vash’s head snap in their direction as well, the smile immediately falling away. There’s a second where everyone is still.

Meryl watches as the three muzzles come to aim at her as though in slow motion. Vash is running towards them, gun in hand and body angled to lunge in a way that would shield them from the bullets but he’s too far away for it to matter. Meryl briefly considers using her derringers but discards the idea for the sake of pulling the terrified Bianca into her arms and turning her back to their assailants, hoping that she can at least make sure nothing happens to the girl.

She hears the shots go off and thinks back to Wolfwood warning them to be careful. She hopes that neither he nor Vash will blame themselves for this, even though she knows better. She closes her eyes and waits.

Meryl waits for the pain, for the blood to bloom on her white jacket. She listens to her own ragged breaths, joined by Bianca’s as they huddle together, counts them. She’s up to ten when she feels the girl in her arms still, the grip she has on Meryl going even tighter than it already was. There’s still no pain.

When she finally lets her eyes open again it’s to the sight of Bianca’s own eyes wide open, along with her mouth. Her face is illuminated faintly by a deep blue light that gives it almost a haunted look. Meryl feels the hair rise on her arms, a shiver running down her spine as she slowly turns around.

It’s hard to tell what exactly she’s looking at, at first. She can make out Vash’s red coat a bit to their right and a swirling mass of… feathers, that protrude from his shoulder, inky black and hovering over where Meryl and Bianca are still clutching at each other. The light she’s seen emanates from spots along the hulking mass, impossibly bright against the dark curtain that shields them from view of the men that shot them. 

Meryl feels something uncomfortable swirl in her gut as she watches the writhing feathers and tries to make sense of them. It’s not quite a wing, there’s too many joints, like the limb stretched itself and grew until it could reach them in time to grasp at the three bullets Meryl can see wedged in between the mass, each wrapped with a long, wide flight feather. 

They uncurl, slowly, deliberately, the movement wrong and unnatural and Meryl hears the bullets that were about to wedge themselves in her back hit the floorboards with a clink. Then the limb is retreating, morphing into something that resembles more of an actual wing as it hovers above Vash’s head where he’s laying down a couple feet away, face pinched in concentration and lighting up brightly with his plant markings. He raises to his feet shakily, the wing swaying above him like a dead branch. He levels his gun at their assailants and Meryl can see it shaking.

“ Leave ,” Vash says, low and strained. 

“This ain’t worth it, man,” one of the men on the other side of the room whispers, fear lacing his words. Meryl’s eyes tear themselves from Vash just in time to watch as he makes a run for the still open door and disappears into the night. His two companions don’t waste much time before following him. 

The second they’re out of the door Vash closes it behind them. With his back to her Meryl can see the way the wing attempts to fold itself in clumsy, jerking movements, not quite managing to press completely flat against Vash’s shoulder blades. It’s left hanging above him instead, awkward and uncomfortable and it looks like it hurts , Meryl realizes with a start, any discomfort caused by the frankly incomprehensible display of anatomy overshadowed by the fact that it is attached to Vash . 

She puts a mental pin in that thought when she feels Bianca sniffle against her shoulder, face pressed into her jacket as if she could hide herself under it. Meryl hushes her gently and rubs her hand on the girl's back.

“Bianca, sweetie, are you okay?” she asks in a quiet voice, trying to coax her out. She feels a weak nod against her shoulder and lets out a relieved sigh. “Okay, that’s good.”

“Are you okay, Meryl?” Vash prods from behind her, worry clear in his tone. “I caught all of them, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did,” she smiles, twisting her neck to look at him, weird, hulking wing and all. Vash steps closer, a relieved smile of his own slowly appearing on his face as Meryl shows no signs of being either hurt in the scuffle or distressed by the additional limb. The plant markings are slowly fading from his face, just a faint glow now and Meryl catches herself staring, caught up in the otherworldly beauty of it. 

She’s about to thank him properly when Bianca jerks violently out of her arms with a distressed sound.

“M-monster!” she yells, eyes locking onto Vash, wide and terrified as she scrambles away until her back hits the wall. 

Vash flinches away from them immediately, face twisting in a grimace, but it only makes the wing protruding from his back flare out with the movement, casting long shadows over the room and making Bianca cry out in fear again. 

Meryl makes a distressed sound, torn between wanting to comfort Vash who is scuttling back deeper into the room while mumbling quiet, miserable little sorry’s and running to Bianca to reassure her that there’s nothing to be afraid of. 

Child first her brain provides helpfully and Meryl forces herself to turn away from where she can see Vash worm his way under the table and focus on the crying girl instead.

“Bianca,” she tries, in the calmest voice she can manage. “Bianca, it’s okay. Vash won’t hurt you, he saved us.”

The girl just shakes her head, arms wrapped tightly around her knees, face hidden in between them. Meryl feels her heart break. The poor thing is terrified, there isn’t much she can do to convince her Vash isn’t another nightmare in her day, looking the way he does right now. She needs to focus on getting her out of here.

“Okay— okay, just—” Meryl comes closer to the girl, slow and deliberate as to not startle her. “You can grab onto me and I’ll take you back to your mom, how does that sound?”

That gets a reaction, teary eyes poking cautiously from above folded arms. “You know mom?”

“Yeah! Yeah, I do, she’s been worried sick about you,” Meryl says, spurred on by the fact that Bianca doesn’t flinch away from her as she urges her up slowly and lets Meryl pick her up. 

Little hands twist themselves around her neck. “Is it gone…?” 

Meryl swallows, feeling her throat contract. “Is what gone, sweetie?”

“The monster,” Bianca whispers back, face pressing into the crook of Meryl’s neck. She can feel hot tears on her skin as she starts walking towards the door.

“That wasn’t a monster,” she explains, trying to keep her voice gentle, feeling helpless tears sting at her own eyes as she catches a glimpse of dark, glowing feathers in the corner of the room and a red coat, squeezed under the table on the dirty floor. “He’s my friend and he was just trying to help.”

“ He’s scary ,” Bianca whimpers into her shoulder and Meryl hurries out of the cabin, shushing her. She closes the door behind her and just breathes for a second, calming down.

She readjusts her grip on the girl in her arms and starts walking back to the ranch, Bianca still sobbing quietly. Meryl tries to comfort her but it’s half-hearted at best; she’s too preoccupied with the memory of Vash’s face twisted with shame as he scrambled away from her and God damn this , she should be back in that cabin right now, helping him, reassuring him but she can’t just leave a freshly traumatized eight year old all alone in the open!  

Meryl feels the tears finally fall from her eyes, frustration and worry mixing uncomfortably in her stomach. She forces herself to walk faster despite her legs already burning, aware that every minute she wastes is another minute that Vash spends alone in that horrible, dirty little room, most likely caught up in a spiral. 

The wing is… new. Both Meryl and Wolfwood are closely acquainted with all the things that make Vash not-quite-human; there are the subtle things, how he’s too fast, too strong, too resilient when normal people would break, his teeth a bit too pointed, how he can go without food or water for too long. Then there are the definitely not subtle things, like the glowing markings they are privy to whenever Vash convinces the townspeople of any new place they are staying at to let him have a look at their plant. The way his body is marred with scars from injuries that no regular person should be able to survive, and certainly not in that quantity. The sweet little rumble that makes Meryl’s hair puff out, lets her taste electricity on her tongue whenever it kicks up somewhere deep in his chest. Vash only let himself do it openly in front of them recently after weeks of coaxing and it makes Meryl’s heart squeeze painfully in her chest because that’s the sound he makes when he’s happy and content and he was afraid that Meryl and Wolfwood would push him away for it. 

But the wing is definitely new. Meryl isn’t surprised Vash has kept it hidden from them considering how cagey he is about everything else but it stings nevertheless. Convincing Vash that the two of them care about him, plant bits and all, is an uphill battle both she and Wolfwood take up every day and Meryl has a feeling that what just happened in that cabin was a big step backwards.

Her thoughts are still swirling rapidly in her head when she finally sees the ranch house peek out in between the tall rock formations. Bianca has fallen asleep at some point while they walked, quiet sobs slowly sputtering out and going silent. Meryl makes her tired legs speed up for the last stretch of the road, panting as she nears the front porch. She’s too exhausted to startle properly when someone grips her shoulder before she even makes it to the door and suddenly Wolfwood’s worried scowl is all that she sees in front of her in the dark.

“Where the hell have you been? It’s been hours, I couldn’t find you dolts anywhere ,” he asks, loud and sounding angry but Meryl knows it just means he was afraid. She pats his shoulder, shaking her head in lieu of an answer while she tries to get enough oxygen back into her lungs. 

“Get the girl—” she gasps out and Wolfwood does, hands gentle as he shifts Bianca from Meryl’s grip to his own, holding her sleeping form on his hip with one arm while the other is still on Meryl’s shoulder, steadying. She holds onto his hand tightly, squeezing his fingers in thanks.

“Stryfe, what happened? Where’s Vash—”

“Later,” Meryl manages, feeling her breath slowly steadying. “I’ll explain on our way there. Go get Bianca back inside and meet me here after.”

For a second Wolfwood looks like he’s about to argue, jaw clenching stubbornly but then the girl in his arms shifts with an exhausted whimper and it’s like all the fight evaporates from him, eyes going soft as he brings up a hand to steady her against his shoulder. 

“Okay,” he says finally and gives her a last worried scowl before walking back inside the house, the door closing behind him with a soft click. 

Meryl straightens up from where she was folded in half and presses the heels of her palms into her eyes, breathing slow but heavy through her nose. Okay. Okay, the worst part is over, now they just need to grab Vash. Meryl is suddenly grateful for the fact that she doesn’t have to do this alone, her nerves already feel fired and for all that Wolfwood’s temper tends to be shorter than hers, he’s surprisingly good with comforting people, especially children. He can deal with Bianca and her mother while she tries to get herself back together.

A few more minutes pass and then the door is opening again, Wolfwood stepping through with the Punisher slung over his shoulder and a determined scowl on his face. With his free hand he takes out a cigarette and lights it.

“Explain,” he says curtly, smoke trailing out of his mouth as they walk.

“Vash managed to track Bianca down to an old mining shack. Most likely human traffickers.” Meryl almost has to jog to keep up with his long strides. She doesn’t complain, though, the pace is still much more manageable than when she was carrying extra weight.

“Lovely,” Wolfwood comments and slows down just a fraction, eyes flashing to her in concern. “What happened to them?”

Meryl doesn’t acknowledge the change of pace but feels grateful all the same. “I’m not sure, they— they ran away after seeing Vash’s…” she trails off, unsure of how to describe what went down.

“What, did they really get that scared of him glowin ’?” Wolfwood huffs out in disbelief.

Meryl shakes her head. “It wasn’t the plant markings, although those were also there. It was, um, we haven’t seen it before, or at least I haven’t—” she gestures vaguely with her hands, “—a wing.”

“Wings,” Wolfwood deadpans. “Needle-noggin has wings?”

“ A wing,” Meryl corrects. “There’s just one.”

Wolfwood sighs out a breath, long and heavy, smoke curling up into the starry sky above them. “Alright. I guess with everything else he has goin’ on, this shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. So he scared them off with a bunch of feathers?”

Meryl swallows, remembering the way those feathers curled around the bullets like long, spindly fingers, the too many joints, bright lights against inky black that looked almost more liquid than solid. “It didn’t look… pleasant, at first,” she admits reluctantly. 

Wolfwood’s brows scrunch up, side-eyeing her, lips twisting around the cigarette. “It’s still just Spikey.”

“I know ,” Meryl bristles. She snaps her eyes away from Wolfwood and focuses on the horizon where she can already see the vague trace of that cursed cabin. “That’s not what I’m trying to say. It’s just that— The two of us, we’re used to Vash and all his weirdness. I like his weirdness. But to those men and to Bianca he must have looked…” 

“...like a monster,” Wolfwood finishes for her, tone sad and understanding. 

“That’s what Bianca called him,” Meryl confirms tiredly. “Vash used the wing to save us, it— it caught the bullets in midair , Nick. But she was already scared when she saw him and…” she made a frustrated sound, “God, I know it’s not her fault but Vash looked devastated . You know how much he likes children, I can’t imagine what one calling him a monster will do to him.”

Wolfwood grunts in acknowledgement and takes a last, long drag of his smoke before flicking it to the sand below their feet. “It’s goin’ to be a whole thing,” he says, not unkindly. A whole thing in the same way getting Vash to show them the scars and the markings and the purring was a whole thing.

Meryl nods as the two of them slide down the dune overlooking the cabin. She really hopes Vash is still in there, it wouldn’t be out of the question for him to just make a run for it considering how shaken up he looked when Meryl left with Bianca. 

Wolfwood peers through the window next to the door but the pane is too dirty and the inside too dark for him to make out anything other than vague shapes that have about as much chance of being their spooked, winged plant as they do of being a simple crate. He turns to Meryl with a shrug and gestures towards the door with his head in a silent question. She bites her lip, arms crossing over her chest anxiously and nods at him to proceed. 

Wolfwood frowns when he meets resistance immediately after pressing down on the handle. 

“No dice. I think he barricaded the door,” he says, pressing against it with more force and feeling wood creek under the strain as something shifts slightly.

Meryl comes up to stand at his side, one hand sliding almost reflexively to rest on his shoulder as she calls out, “Vash? Are you in there?”

There’s no answer, the night ringing out only with the chittering of various bugs. After a minute of silence Wolfwood growls and bangs on the door loudly.

“Needle-noggin!” he shouts, half anger and half worry. “I know you’re in there, I can fuckin’ hear you! Let us in!”

Meryl can’t hear anything inside the cabin but she trusts Wolfwood’s ears more than she does hers. She tries in a softer tone, “Vash, we’re worried. Please just say something so that we know you’re okay.”

There’s a beat of silence. Meryl eyes Wolfwood’s expression as they wait. He looks as though he’s half tempted to unwrap the Punisher and just blast a hole through the wall. 

“I’m fine.”

Meryl feels her hand tighten on Wolfwood’s shoulder at the clipped, strained tone of Vash’s voice. They exchange a concerned look and for a moment Meryl seriously considers just letting Wolfwood shoot his way into the cabin. 

“You sure don’t sound fine, Spikey,” he yells back.

“I am! I just need some time to get, ah, things under wraps, so to speak. You guys can go back, I’ll join you later,” Vash chuckles in a way that is probably supposed to be reassuring but comes out more pained. Meryl huffs out a frustrated sound.

“We’re not leaving you all alone in this shack for the rest of the night. Please , open up.” There’s no answer again for a while and it’s Meryl’s turn to bang a fist against the door helplessly. “Vash, we’ve been over this, we don’t care what you look like, just let us help you!”

He doesn’t answer anymore, no matter what they try. Wolfwood growls, setting the Punisher down to rest against the wall of the cabin and pushing against the barricaded door with renewed force. Meryl watches as a small gap appears in between it and the frame.

“Come on,” Wolfwood addresses her, strained with the effort of holding the door open, “I don’t call you Shortie for nothin’.”

Meryl slaps his shoulder for the nickname, earning herself an amused, albeit labored huff, and slips through the small gap and into the dusty interior. The second she makes it in, the door bangs back against the frame as Wolfwood lets it go and Meryl sees what looks like most of the furniture that she remembers being in the cabin stacked on top of one another, almost all the way to the ceiling. 

“You good?” Wolfwood calls out and when she answers in the affirmative he asks, “Think you can open it from the other side?”

Meryl cranes her neck as she looks at the jenga tower of crates that blocks the front door. “I think that’s going to be a no, sorry.”

She hears Wolfwood sigh on the other side of the wall and the familiar sound of a lighter being flipped open. “Okay, just— give me a minute to catch my breath and I’ll worm my way in. Go make sure Spikey is doin’ fine, meanwhile.”

Meryl is already stepping away from the door before he’s done speaking. With most of the furniture congregated in one place it won’t be hard to guess where Vash is hiding. She takes out her flashlight and flicks it on, the beam passing over the dirty floor littered with abandoned cards, empty beer bottles and… feathers, Meryl realizes with a start. Bloody feathers, scattered around the place in tufts, stained red around the quills. She follows them with her flashlight until the beam lands on a shape curled in the corner of the room, covered with one of the dusty tarps that she saw on the crates the last time she was here. There’s a scrap of red peeking out from underneath it near the ground.

The tarp makes a distressed sound as she approaches and Meryl instantly freezes. 

“Vash?”

“ Please ,” he says, practically begging, and it makes her heart twist painfully. “It’ll be gone in the morning, I swear. Just… leave, please. You don’t have to see me like this.”

Meryl hesitates. She’s seen Vash self-conscious and embarrassed about his non-human traits, she knows he doesn’t like that he’s different but it was never this bad. If he really doesn’t want them to see him like this then do they have any right to force him? Meryl gnaws at her lip anxiously, letting her flashlight fall away from where Vash was huddled. Instead, her eyes catch on the clump of feathers that rests just under her feet and she directs the beam of light to it. 

Even separated from Vash, the bright little spots still shine against the black background of the feathers, a faint glow that pales in comparison to what Meryl remembers from earlier. She picks one of them up, crumpled and bloody near the base. 

“Did—” Meryl feels her throat constrict, swallows and tries again, “—did you tear all of these out?”

There’s silence for a beat, and then, “...they wouldn’t go away.”

“ Vash ,” Meryl says tightly and before she can come up with anything else there’s a grunt behind her and the creaking of wood. She turns around to see Wolfwood squeeze his way through the front door and his eyes immediately travel upwards to stare at the tower of furniture.

“Fuck me runnin’, Spikey. Talk about overdoin’ things,” he says, sounding almost impressed. Then his gaze shifts to Meryl who’s still holding the bloody feathers and to the tarp in the corner of the room, mouth twisting into a frown at the bloody trail leading up to it. 

Wolfwood harbors none of the hesitation that Meryl felt as he strides with determination towards Vash, completely ignoring all of his protests. He kneels close to where his coat is peeking from underneath the tarp, hands hovering but not touching. 

“Needle-noggin,” he prompts in a surprisingly calm voice. Meryl approaches them, spurred on by his no-nonsense attitude. “ Vash . Are you hurt?”

“No,” comes the answer, tight and muffled. “Not seriously.”

Wolfwood’s eyes land on the feathers scattered liberally around where Vash is sitting. “Let me guess. Self-inflicted?”

Vash chuckles with no real humor to it. The two of them exchange a glance, a silent conversation about how exactly they should proceed here. Meryl furrows her eyebrows. Wolfwood shrugs back at her.

“What’s wrong?” she prods gently after a moment, trying to keep her head clear. Find the problem first and then they can start working on a solution. She rests the hand that isn’t holding a flashlight on Wolfwood’s neck where he’s still kneeling down and feels his head fall against her hip. 

“I can’t…pull it back in,” Vash whispers after a moment, sounding almost like he’s ashamed of the fact. 

Wolfwood rests his chin in his hand and quirks his brow, voice unimpressed, “So you tried to tear it off?”

The tarp huffs out a frustrated sound. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

Meryl hums thoughtfully, “What do you usually do? To, uh, hide it, I mean.”

“It’s… kind of the first time it’s happened since I was young,” he admits sheepishly.

“Oh,” Meryl says, understanding dawning on her. 

That… actually explains a lot, she thinks to herself. Vash might be shy about his other plant traits but he can at least control them. No wonder he’s freaking out about this if the last time he experienced something similar was over a century ago. 

Meryl taps a finger against her flashlight one, two, three times, thinking. She then turns it off, hiding it back into her jacket. The room is dark, but not completely and with the light off she can just about make out the faint glow coming off from underneath the tarp. Wolfwood shoots her a questioning glance as she sits down on the dirty floor next to him and reaches out her hand to slide it under the material, palm up, and leave it there.

“If you really want us to leave, if you think it would help , we’ll leave,” she says and ignores the alarmed look Wolfwood gives her. “But I just want you to know that we’re here for you, Vash, if you’ll have us.”

Wolfwood looks like he’s about to argue against the leaving part but he stops when the tarp slowly shifts and Meryl feels a hand slide into hers, warm fingers gripping on tightly. 

“There you are,” she hums, squeezing back with a smile. Wolfwood relaxes next to her, his own hand coming up to grip at the tarp, not yet pulling it up.

“Think you can show us that pretty face of yours?” he asks gently, tugging at the material slightly.

“Okay,” Vash answers after a moment, nerves clear in his voice but nowhere near as bad as when they first came in. “Yeah, okay. Just— leave it over the…?”

“Got it,” Wolfwood murmurs and pulls the tarp up slowly, until they can see Vash’s coat, the hand that’s still holding onto Meryl’s, his legs pulled tightly against his chest and finally his eyes, shining in the dark, wide and unsure. Wolfwood lets go at this point, the material still slung over Vash’s shoulder and back, and the outline of his wing doesn’t leave much to the imagination. Still, both of them keep their eyes trained squarely on Vash’s face.

“There you are, indeed,” Wolfwood parrots and doesn’t waste time scooting over to press himself against Vash’s side when he doesn’t show any signs of not stopping him. His other side is still covered so Meryl worms her way in between his legs instead, never letting go of their clasped hands. Vash’s head falls to Wolfwood’s shoulder, face pressing into the crook of his neck.

“Sorry,” he chokes out with a wobbly smile. 

“What’re you apologizin’ for?” Wolfwood huffs, a hand coming up to tangle in Vash’s hair and press him closer.

“Scarring a little girl for life,” he says in a mean, self-deprecating tone.

Meryl rests her chin on Vash’s raised knee with a frown. “She wouldn’t even have a life anymore if you weren’t there.” She squeezes his hand between both of hers. “Neither would I.”

“I should have been able to do it without having you see that .”

Wolfwood’s eyebrow quirks up, gaze sliding up to where the tarp was still wrapped around Vash’s wing. “Is it really that bad?”

“Yes.”

“ No! ”

“Meryl, it’s okay,” Vash shifts so that he can look at her properly with a smile, forced and sad. “I know what it looks like, you don’t have to lie—”

“I’m not lying ,” she bristles.

To her surprise, Vash’s expression turns stern. “Bianca wasn’t lying either. She was afraid of me, she said as much. I scared her.”

“ You saved her .”

“Oookay,” Wolfwood interjects, pressing Vash’s face into his shoulder before he can say anything else. “How about we all calm down before continuin’ this particular conversation.”

Both of them deflate, eyes averting from each other. Vash’s hand twitches in Meryl’s grip but he doesn’t let go. She sighs, guilt eating at her stomach, and presses her face into his knee.

“I mean, I doubt the kid was lyin’ about bein’ scared,” Wolfwood starts and earns himself one vindicated and one indignant look. “ Let me finish , for fuck’s sake. She spent most of her day sittin’ in the den of human traffickers. You could show her a baby cat and she’d probably still get terrified.”

“She wasn’t scared of Meryl,” Vash points out petulantly. 

“Well, that’s because Shortie’s cuter than a kitten,” Wolfwood says without skipping a beat and sends her a shit-eating grin when Meryl looks at him, unimpressed. “My point bein’, yeah, you’re kinda weird, Spikey. But if it ain’t clear enough by this point, we like your brand of weird. And it doesn’t make you any less of a good person. Or a person in general, for that matter.”

Vash is quiet after that, a contemplative twist to his mouth as he traces the fingers of his prosthetic hand on Wolfwood’s bare chest, tugging lightly at the hairs there. Meryl watches him with a frown, wanting to reassure but lacking the words. She settles for tucking herself against his chest and bringing up his hand to kiss his knuckles.

Vash swallows and lets out a shaky breath. “You guys should go back to the ranch house. We don’t get to sleep in actual beds much.”

“Exactly,” Wolfwood hums, head resting against Vash’s as his eyes close. “What’s one more night on the floor?”

“No bed compares to this,” Meryl adds, patting at Vash’s chest and revels in the little laugh it earns her.

“Thank you,” Meryl hears after a couple of minutes of the three of them laying there, wrapped in each other. She presses one last kiss to Vash’s gloved fingers and lets herself drift off.

Chapter Text

In the morning, the wing is gone. 

So are the feathers, Wolfwood notes when he wakes up with a crick in his neck. There’s still cards and empty beer bottles on the ground, and the floorboards are stained red in places, but the black feathers that were strewn liberally all over the cabin are nowhere to be found. As though they were never even there.

Vash woke up before either he or Meryl did and dismantled the ridiculously tall barricade that’s been blocking the entrance. The hulking mass that Wolfwood has only ever seen covered with a tarp no longer hangs above his shoulder and he seems much happier for it. Too happy, Wolfwood thinks when Vash bids them good morning with a too wide smile. He seems loose and relaxed in spite of the state he was in yesterday, reassuring them that he’s fine when Meryl prods at him gently about how he’s feeling. 

Wolfwood doesn’t buy it for a second. Vash is a good actor and an even better liar, especially when he gets it in his head that hiding things from people will somehow spare their own feelings. Or if he thinks he deserves to feel bad. The worst part is, even if they catch him starving himself out of guilt or neglecting to take off his prosthetic for too long, there’s still a non-zero chance that Vash won’t be persuaded to either eat or take it off. 

Much like in a physical battle, Vash’s favorite way to deal with conflict is avoidance. Don’t engage unless absolutely necessary, which is to say, don’t engage until someone other than him might be hurt. Let himself suffer for the sake of others, a picture-perfect martyr. It makes Wolfwood want to grab him by the shoulders and shake until something that is clearly dislodged in his head snaps back into its proper place. But he knows from experience that trying to force Vash into anything will just make him dig his heels in deeper. He and Meryl are the same in this regard, too stubborn for their own good. 

So when they’re walking back to the ranch house and Vash keeps a healthy couple of feet of distance between them, Wolfwood says nothing. When they ask him outright if he wants to talk about what happened and he doesn’t answer, the perpetual smile slipping for just a second before it’s back on his face, Wolfwood digs his nails into the meat of his palms and still says nothing. When Vash makes an immediate bee-line for their shared room once they reach the ranch house, barely stopping to accept Miss Hawthorne’s thanks for finding her daughter, and when he and Meryl find him locked in the little bathroom on the second floor opposite of where they’re staying, Wolfwood wants to pry it open and say a lot of things , but still, he doesn’t. 

Instead, Wolfwood grabs a pack of smokes, after a second of thought grabs another, and goes down to the front porch. Guilt eats away at his stomach for leaving Meryl alone but he feels like he’s going to snap at the first person that opens their mouth in front of him and they really don’t need to get into an argument with Vash like this. 

Wolfwood is sitting on the stairs in front of the house, about to light one of his last remaining cigarettes when he picks up the pitter-patter of small feet on wood to his right. He snaps his lighter closed and tilts his head, listening, his previous anger falling away when he realizes who it is that decided to join him. 

“Hasn’t your mother told you that it’s rude to sneak up on people?” Wolfwood asks without turning to look at his listener. 

He can hear a surprised hitch in her breathing a second before Bianca answers, “How did you notice me? I was being really quiet.” 

“Not quiet enough,” he drawls back, hiding the cigarette that he’s been holding in his mouth in its pack again before sliding it into his pocket, along with his lighter. 

Wolfwood doesn’t have to wait long before there’s the sound of wood creaking again, much louder now that Bianca isn’t trying to keep herself hidden. He finally turns to look at where she’s holding onto the front porch railing, peeking over it cautiously. Her face is twisted into a small frown, but she doesn’t look afraid. If anything, she looks curious.

“What’d you want, pipsqueak?” Wolfwood asks, keeping his tone light and not moving from his place at the bottom of the stairs. Bianca’s frown deepens at the nickname but she doesn’t leave.

She leans a bit closer to him, eyes fleeting left and right nervously before settling back on Wolfwood with determination. “My brother said you have candy.”

“And what if I do?” he huffs, amused.

Bianca bites her lip, clearly torn. Wolfwood takes some pity on her and digs out a lolly from his pocket, placing it a foot away from him on the stairs, noting the way the girl’s eyes light up at the sight of it. Her eyes jump from the candy to him one more time and then she’s slowly approaching.

To his surprise, Bianca doesn’t immediately bolt when she picks it up. Instead, she takes a seat on the stairs and unwraps the lolly, big eyes staring up at him.

Wolfwood props up his chin on his fist, staring back. “What’s up?”

Bianca hesitates, before popping the candy out of her mouth to say, “You’re friends with the short lady. And the…” her eyes rove nervously over their surroundings again, voice turning into a whisper, “... the monster .”

Wolfwood considers her for a second, weighing his words. 

“Yeah,” he says finally in an even tone. “What about it?”

Bianca seems taken aback by the response, like she wasn’t expecting him to actually admit to it. “Aren’t you scared of him?”

Wolfwood shrugs. “Why would I be? I just told you he’s my friend.”

“Well, yeah, but—” she argues, unsure. “He looks so…weird.”

“I know,” Wolfwood grins, unabashed. “It’s kind of a part of his charm.”

The girl is clearly puzzled by how cavalier he is being about the whole thing. She pops the lolly back into her mouth with a lost expression on her face. Wolfwood sighs, leaning back on his elbows.

“You like bugs, right?” Bianca nods. “Well, do you think they’re pretty?”

“Yes,” comes the answer, so fast that Wolfwood can’t help but laugh.

“Okay, does your mom think that as well? Or your brother?”

Bianca frowns again. “No. But that’s because Percy is stupid and mom doesn’t know better.”

Wolfwood snorts at the petulant tone of her voice. “That’s how I feel about Spikey. He’ll always be the prettiest critter around to me, but most people don’t see him this way. And they’re idiots for that,” he adds with a knowing smirk aimed at the girl, “but that’s their problem.”

Bianca stares at him, contemplative. “Your friend looked normal today. Do you also turn into a monster?”

Wolfwood winces internally. Can’t turn into something I already am, kid. “Nope. Neither does the short lady.”

“Okay,” she nods, fiddling with the stick leftover from her lolly. Her eyes flicker up to Wolfwood a bit shyly. “Mom said I should thank you for helping me.”

“I didn’t do nothin’,” Wolfwood hums. “If you wanna thank somebody, it’ll have to be the other two.”

“I know,” Bianca says quietly. “Percy thinks that— that Mister Vash is nice. And my brother’s dumb but he doesn’t lie.” 

Wolfwood tilts his head, waiting for her to continue. The girl is holding up surprisingly well after yesterday, all things considered. He prods gently when she doesn’t speak for a while, “I can thank him for you, if you’re too scared.”

“I’m not scared,” Bianca says immediately, loud and resolute only in the way that small children get about things which are completely untrue. “I’ll go. And you’ll go with me, so that… so that if Percy asks if I did it and I say yes, he can’t accuse me of lying.”

“Whatever you say, little lady,” Wolfwood chuckles, rising to his feet and dusting off his pants. He extends one of his hands to Bianca and obediently props her on his hip when she instantly tugs at his sleeve, demanding to be picked up.

“Alright, pipsqueak,” Wolfwood says with an encouraging smile as she grips tightly at the lapels of his suit jacket. He readjusts the girl in his arms and opens the front door. “Let’s go face that monster.”

Meryl is starting to lose her patience.

There is very clearly something bothering Vash. He’s twitchy and tense all over. He won’t let Meryl touch him at all, every time she tries to approach him he dances away with an excuse of some sort. Anytime she asks what’s wrong, he reassures her that it’s nothing. Whenever she mentions last night, he instantly shuts down and either ignores her or leaves the room to lock himself in the bathroom again. 

That leaves them at an impasse; Meryl is laying on the bed in their shared room, propped against the headboard. There is more than enough space for Vash to sit next to her, even without the two of them touching, yet he insists on squeezing his lanky frame into the old loveseat in the corner. Not initiating physical contact is pretty regular for him, but Vash hardly ever refuses it when it’s offered, so she and Wolfwood make sure to offer often. Meryl lost count of the number of times Vash has wormed his way into her lap while she wrote, head pillowed on her chest as he watched her work with a content smile, basking in the casual affection. The fact that he doesn’t do so now speaks volumes.

Meryl also doesn’t miss that he repositioned the loveseat to a spot from where both the door and the single window are easily visible. She’s seen him do similar maneuvers a hundred times while they stayed at seedy hotels in more dangerous parts of the planet. Whatever is wrong, it has him seriously on edge.

She's given up attempting to talk to him and is trying to write some reports in her notebook, or at least rough drafts, but she’s too distracted with Vash’s constant fidgeting. At this point she’s just sitting here, pencil tucked behind her ear and gaze fixed on Vash with a scowl. Maybe if she stares disapprovingly enough, he’ll finally break and decide to talk to her. 

Vash, for his part, is doing an incredible job of pretending Meryl isn’t trying to drill holes into his skull with her eyes and a much worse one of faking he’s alright. His hands twitch where they work at cleaning his gun, which has already been spotless for an hour. There’s a pinch to his brows that he can’t quite get rid of and it makes Meryl’s stomach twist with anxiety; Vash is in pain, or at least in some sort of discomfort severe enough that he is unable to hide it. And he has a lot of experience hiding.

It’s bad enough that Meryl briefly considers grabbing Wolfwood, who is still brooding on the front porch, and cornering Vash until he has to tell them what’s wrong. But it has about the same chance of working as it does of just making him flee the house altogether and she really doesn’t want him to be alone in this state. She sighs in defeat, finally closing her notebook and setting it on the nightstand before plopping down on the bed and staring up at the peeling plaster on the ceiling dejectedly.

“Vash?” she tries one last time.

He makes a noise to signal he’s listening. As though he doesn’t know what she’ll ask about already.

Meryl chews on her lip for a moment, thinking. Asking if he’s fine will get her empty platitudes. Inquiring about the wing proper results in an immediate shut down and high probability of her target absconding. She has to find a middle-ground, something that's specific enough as to not allow him to deflect but at the same time won’t send Vash running for the hills.

C’mon Stryfe , says a voice in her head that sounds alarmingly like Roberto’s, You’re a reporter. It's your job to make people talk. To notice things.  

"You grew up on the Ships, right?" she starts slowly. "With your mother and brother." 

"Yes," Vash answers in a measured tone. The why do you ask is implied, even when he doesn't voice it. "Rem and Nai."

"Were you happy with them?"

She hears him breathe out a sigh, sincerity ringing out in his voice as he says, "Yes. I was."

Meryl is quiet for a moment, picking her next words carefully. 

"What did they do to help you when you got like this?" she asks, keeping her voice gentle as she finally turns her head to look at him.

Vash visibly wilts, eyes averting. His hands fiddle with his gun, flicking the safety on and off, on and off again. Meryl knows he keeps it unloaded unless he’s sure he’ll have to shoot, although that scarcely ever happens.

The safety flips on. “Like what?”

Meryl forces her frustration down at his clueless act and says, as calmly as she can, “Closed-off. Hiding. Clearly in pain but won’t admit it.”

The safety flips off. “Is that what you think?”

Meryl groans internally. “Is that not the case?” she challenges.

The safety flips on. Vash’s voice is softer when he speaks next, eyes still on his gun. “I’m not hurt. Not in a way that matters. You don’t have to worry.”

The safety flips off. Meryl sighs and gets up from the bed. Vash immediately tenses, eyes watching her warily, but doesn’t bolt when she stands in front of him and holds out her hand. He hands the gun to her without question, holding it by the muzzle. 

Meryl flips the safety on and puts the gun on a small table beside the loveseat. 

“I would prefer you to not be hurt, period,” she says and perches on the table, the closest he’s allowed her to get to him the entire day.

Vash stares at her helplessly, too sharp teeth worrying at his lip. He looks torn, like he’s deliberately holding himself back from reaching out to her. Almost there, she thinks.

Vash is just about to say something when there’s a sudden knocking at the door, startling them both. Vash’s mouth instantly clicks closed, eyes averting from her again, scooting just a little bit farther away in the loveseat. Meryl closes her eyes and lets out a long, heavy sigh before jumping off of the table and going to open the door.

“Wolfwood, I’m going to ki—” she starts to say but stops when the open door reveals he isn’t alone.

“Oh, yeah?” Wolfwood smirks at her, readjusting his grip on Bianca where she’s balanced on his hip. “Go on, Shortie, tell me what you’re gonna do to me.”

“Ew,” the girl comments with a grimace. “Don’t kiss in front of me, that’s gross.”

Meryl splutters, feeling her face grow hot. “That’s not what I was going to—!” 

“What was it then? Please don’t spare the details on account of the kid,” Wolfwood goads her on with a grin. Meryl crosses her arms and puffs out her cheeks. 

“Never mind that, why are you here?” she demands, gaze sliding nervously back to Vash to check up on him. Bringing Bianca in here might be the worst idea Wolfwood has had in a while.

Sure enough, Vash is completely frozen on the loveseat, whole body tense as though he’s ready to bolt at any second. Meryl watches his eyes flick to the open window of their room and feels her own panic rise.

“Relax, Stryfe,” Wolfwood says, tone still amused but considerably less provoking. “Pipsqueak here just wanted to say somethin’ to our mutual friend. Ain’t that right?” he asks, looking at her encouragingly. Bianca’s little hands grip tighter onto the lapels of his suit but she nods resolutely at Meryl.

“That’s…” Meryl hesitates. Vash still hasn’t moved an inch or made any sound behind her. She isn’t sure if he’s even breathing . “Wolfwood, I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

“Listen,” he says, quiet but confident, the hand not holding Bianca coming to rest on her shoulder. “We both know there’s nothin’ either of us can say to Vash right now that would help. But I think this one here,” he bounces the girl lightly in his arm, earning himself a small giggle, “might just do the trick.”

Meryl takes his words in, looking back at him uncertainly. She finds no hesitation in his eyes. 

“Okay,” she says finally, taking a hold of the hand on her shoulder with her own. “If you say so.” It’s not like there is much to lose at this point, she’s been trying for hours and Vash hasn’t budged. They might as well try.

Wolfwood gives her shoulder one last squeeze and steps further into the room slowly. Previously, Vash was covered by Meryl standing in the doorway, but now there is nothing to shield him from the girl that Wolfwood brings in with him. His hands grip at the arms of the loveseat with enough force that Meryl can see the material strain under his fingers. 

The sight of Vash the Stampede, the Humanoid Typhoon said to be dangerous enough to level entire cities, looking this terrified of an eight year old would probably be pretty funny, if knowing exactly why he’s afraid didn’t make Meryl’s heart break. 

“Needle-noggin,” Wolfwood prompts as he comes closer, uncharacteristically gently. “ Breathe .”

Vash does, taking a sudden breath and Meryl realizes that he really did stop before. His eyes fleet nervously between Wolfwood and Bianca, the latter peeking out at him from under Wolfwood’s chin with about as much caution as curiosity. His gaze slides for a moment to Meryl and she gives him what she hopes is a reassuring smile, albeit a bit wobbly at the edges.

“Hi,” Bianca says after a moment of them just staring at each other. 

Vash swallows. “Hello,” he answers with what looks more like a grimace than a smile. 

“Go on, then,” Wolfwood hums quietly, although Meryl isn’t sure which one of them it’s aimed at. Bianca breaks first. 

“I wanna say thank you,” she says in a shy voice, face pressed into the crook of Wolfwood’s neck. “For helping and stuff.”

Meryl watches as Vash relaxes ever so slightly, his death grip on the loveseat loosening. When he tries to smile this time it comes out much closer to the actual thing. 

“I’m just glad you’re okay. You shouldn’t have had to go through all of that in the first place.”

“And, um,” Bianca continues, a bit bolder. “I think you look cool.”

Vash blinks, thrown off. “You…do?”

“Yeah,” she confirms, tone dead-serious. “You’re like a worm.”

Meryl can’t stop the amused snort from escaping and Wolfwood doesn’t bother to. Vash, for his part, just seems confused. It makes some more tension bleed out of his frame as he makes an inquisitive noise. “How so?”

“You glow,” Bianca explains, like it makes perfect sense. It probably does to her, Meryl thinks with a smile. “My brother says that the bugs I find look like little monsters but they don’t. They’re cool and pretty, even if some of them are kinda scary when you first see them,” she fiddles with the material of Wolfwood’s suit, peering over at Vash shyly. “So, um. Sorry, for calling you that. I don’t think you’re a monster. You’re just a cool bug.”

Vash freezes when the word ‘monster’ enters the conversation but by the end of Bianca’s speech he looks relaxed again, a small but genuine smile appearing on his face. His eyes go soft around the corners as he stares back at her.

“You really think so?” he asks and chuckles when the girl nods at him with fervor. “Well, thank you, Bianca. That— that’s very kind.”

The girl uncurls herself a bit more from Wolfwood’s jacket. “Where’s your wing?” she asks, curious.

Vash frowns but he doesn’t tense again. "I prefer to keep it hidden. I wouldn't want to scare you, or anyone else for that matter."

"Oh," Bianca says, clearly disappointed. "Okay."

Vash hesitates for a moment before proposing, "I could show you the glowing thing again, though."

The girl pipes up immediately. Wolfwood sets her down with a chuckle and there's no trace of fear in her body as she climbs up to join Vash in the loveseat. He looks a bit nervous as Bianca stares at him expectantly, eyes flashing to where Meryl has taken a seat on the table again, with Wolfwood leaning against it right next to her. They give him mirrored, encouraging smiles.

Vash smiles back, and it's barely been a day of him sulking but Meryl feels relief flood her whole body at the sight. It's still a bit uneven, a little nervous, but it reaches his eyes, makes them crinkle at the corners. It stays on his face as Vash's eyelids fall down and the three of them are treated to what's still one of Meryl's favorite sights in the world.

The plant markings bloom over Vash's skin, white lines that pulse gently in a rhythm that almost resembles a heartbeat. Swirling, circular patterns weave themselves around his features and he's beautiful like this, Meryl thinks almost absentmindedly. 

Vash's eyes open, blue irises covered in those same intricate patterns. He takes off his glasses and smiles brightly at Bianca whose mouth is wide open, her own eyes full of wonder. 

"Wow," is all she says, completely awestruck.

"That's one cool bug," Wolfwood agrees and there's the same type of fondness in his voice that Meryl feels swell in her chest. She hums her own agreement and leans her head on Wolfwood’s shoulder as they watch Bianca climb further into Vash’s lap, eyes never leaving his face. He smiles even wider, sharp teeth showing, and his prosthetic hand comes up to support her back. 

“He’s purrin’, by the way,” Wolfwood stage whispers to Meryl and she giggles when Vash takes his eyes off of Bianca to shoot them a dirty look. His attention is quickly taken up by the girl again when she brings up a small hand to trace the patterns on his cheek. 

“What I wouldn’t do to get myself ears like yours…” Meryl muses dreamily.

“Just for that, huh?” he huffs, amused.

Meryl shrugs, “It’d be worth it.”

Wolfwood hums and she feels his head rest on top of hers. She slides her hand up to tangle in the fine hairs at his nape.

“Okay,” Meryl admits in a whisper as Vash leans closer to Bianca so that she can inspect his glowing eyes. “I take it back, this might have been the best idea you’ve ever had.”

“Is the bar really set that low?” he scoffs and Meryl feels it ruffle her hair.

“You’re the one who set it.”

“Such cruel words for the guy that you almost turned into roadkill the first time we met,” Wolfwood sighs, faux sadness thick in his voice. Meryl tugs on his hair lightly with a huff and the sigh dissolves into laughter.

Bianca stays for a while longer. Once she gets her fill tracing the patterns on Vash’s skin, she sits in his lap and upon some prompting starts describing the various critters she finds in the caves around her house. In great detail. Meryl tries to tune out for that part.

Vash listens to her with rapt attention, however, interjecting every once in a while to ask questions or add something of his own. Unsurprisingly, his decades spent on No Man’s Land mean he can figure out which bugs she refers to with pin-point accuracy. Meryl tabs out of the conversation and goes back to work on her raptors when they start talking about mandibles with great enthusiasm. Vash getting this excited about something is cute, but she can only hear the word 'thorax' so many times before it makes her want to gag.

Wolfwood repositions himself to lean against the open window with a cigarette in his mouth. He pipes up with his own comments every once in a while. When he mentions that some of the worms can be smoked ‘for fun’ Bianca looks at him with stars in her eyes while Vash and Meryl shoot him mirrored disapproving stares.

At all times during their talk Vash keeps his plant markings showing, glowing dimly against his skin but still very much there. They wind themselves prettily around his lips every time he smiles.

Eventually Bianca tires herself out and Wolfwood puts out his cigarette before picking her up from Vash’s lap. 

“Alright, pipsqueak, let’s get you to bed,” he says lightly and leaves the room with the girl already dozing on his shoulder. She gives a small wave as they step through the door and Vash returns it with a smile.

“So,” Meryl starts when they’re gone, abandoning her notebook to squeeze herself into the loveseat next to Vash. He lets her, head pillowed on the backrest of their chair, relaxed and content. “How are you feeling?”

Vash’s good hand comes up to play with her hair. This close she can feel moreso than hear the happy thrum coming off of his chest. “Good,” he says. “For real, this time.”

Meryl breathes a sigh of relief. “Good.”

She brings up a hand to trace the remnants of light on his skin. Vash leans into her touch, eyes closing. 

Seemingly out of nowhere, he tenses, brows pinching in discomfort for a second before smoothing out. Meryl immediately takes her hand away, afraid she’s somehow hurt him, but Vash catches her wrist and brings it back. She cups his face gently and feels another tremor rock through him.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, as she did many times today already, but this time Vash actually answers. 

“It’s the—” he sucks in a breath through his teeth, discomfort clear in the line of his shoulders, “—the wing.”

His eyes are still closed. Meryl hums and swipes her thumb over his cheek, letting it rest on the beauty mark. “What about it?” she prompts when he doesn’t continue.

“I’m not sure,” Vash sighs, looking tired. “It’s— itchy. It usually is, but I can easily ignore it. Ever since yesterday, though, it’s been—” he grimaces through another full-body tremor, “— bad .”

“Maybe we should have a look?” Meryl proposes gently. 

Vash presses his face into the backrest and groans, “What if I can’t hide it again?”

“We’ll figure something out,” she reassures him. Worst case scenario, they can cover it up and camp out somewhere while they wait for it to disappear again. Meryl is more concerned with making sure that pained expression fades from Vash’s face.

He peeks one eye open at her, some of the nerves back in his voice as he says, “Are you sure? It’s not pretty. I understand if you’d rather not look, I can do this in the bathroom—” 

“Oh, shut up,” she berates, fed up with hearing the same thing the entire day. She grabs Vash by the face, looking at him with determination. “I don’t care what it looks like. Just let us help you, you stubborn idiot.”

A hopeful little smile blooms on Vash’s squished face. “Okay.”

Meryl nods resolutely and lets him go. Wolfwood picks this moment to enter the room and she immediately tells him to close the door. He does so with a quirked eyebrow, the lock clicking shut. He sheds his jacket on his way to join them.

“Something is wrong with Vash’s wing,” Meryl informs. “We’re going to find out what.”

“Alright,” Wolfwood agrees easily, leaning against the arm of the loveseat. He cards his fingers through Vash’s hair affectionately. “Feelin’ better, Needle-noggin?”

“Mhmm,” he answers, eyes slipping closed. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me, it was all pipsqueak's idea.”

Vash smiles and after another tremor racks his frame peels himself off the loveseat with a sigh. He takes his coat off and drapes it over the backrest, hesitates for a fraction of a second and then does the same with his turtleneck. Meryl can’t help the pang of anger she feels as her eyes slide over the scars and wires matting his skin. She breathes in and out steadily, willing it away. That’s not what Vash needs right now.

He slinks down to the ground, long legs folding underneath him and is soon joined by Meryl and Wolfwood, both facing him.

“Okay,” he says with an uneven smile. “Here we go.”

Chapter Text

Wolfwood has seen his fair share of horrors. Half-formed things that can barely be called alive in the labs at Julai. People augmented to Hell and back in Conrad’s ceaseless ambition to create his superhumans. Hell, he should be counted as one of them, even if his own monstrosity was wrapped in a neater package than most were lucky to get. Either way, between what happens at the Eye of Michael and the mercenary work he’s done for them, Wolfwood is intimately acquainted with less than savory sights.

So when Vash tells them that they might want to close their eyes at first, Wolfwood scoffs and keeps them open. There is very little that can make him think of Vash as anything other than angelic to a fault, weird plant bits and all. And he’s basically seen the thing already, anyhow, along with the feathers. It was covered by a tarp, sure, but it’s not like the shape left much to the imagination. It’s just a wing, same as any common thomas has, how bad can it be?

Very bad, his brain informs him as a mass of dark feathers bursts from Vash’s scarred back in an almost violent manner. It looks like something is trying to crawl out of him, the limb stretching out and out, additional joints appearing seemingly out of nowhere followed by more of those long, spindly feathers that writhe around in a flurry, grasping at any furniture they can reach as though they’re afraid of being pulled back in. They’re covered in bright spots that are almost blinding against the darkness of the feathers, pulsing in time with the plant markings running along Vash’s face and down his chest, dimmer in places where the skin is marred by scar tissue. 

Wolfwood feels lightheaded. The limb twists itself in impossible to follow patterns, and it looks more like limbs, plural, because there’s too many joints, too many feathers, and they all bend in ways that should be anatomically impossible without breaking something. Wolfwood would know, he has a lot of experience in all the different manners you can break a bone and the current display brings back some very painful memories.

There’s a general sensation of… wrongness, when looking at it. Discomfort. The beginning of a headache as his brain tries and fails to make sense of what his eyes are seeing. An urge to turn away, to flinch back when one of the too thin, too long feathers creeps up to where Wolfwood is sitting and skims over his arm. He does flinch away at that, the sensation impossibly light but still making him feel as though he will get burned if it keeps touching him.

Before Wolfwood can create any real distance between himself and the writhing mass, there’s a small hand wrapping around his wrist and holding him steady. His eyes tear themselves away from where the limb now extends almost all the way to the ceiling and are met with Meryl’s steely gaze. 

“Don’t focus on it,” she says, and there is a tremble in her voice that betrays her confidence. “Focus on Vash.”

Wolfwood grips her hand back like a lifeline. He can hear the rustle of it still, can see it from the corner of his eyes because of how much of the room is covered in it by this point. But despite how seemingly haphazard the movements are, the mass keeps away from the two of them. Aside from the single stray feather, none more have tried to reach past where Wolfwood and Meryl are sitting and that realization is what makes him snap out of the daze the display’s had him in and actually look at Vash.

His eyes are closed. His face is scrunched up in concentration, plant markings bright against his skin, his hair plastered to his sweaty forehead as he takes measured but strained breaths. Wolfwood can see the material of his pants pull taut where Vash’s fingers dig into his knees. The wing casts a shadow over him and at the same time illuminates his features with a deep blue glow. It would almost make Vash look like one of the dependent plants floating peacefully in their tanks, if not for the violent writhing that acts as his background. Wolfwood tries not to focus too much on that last part.

One of the spindly feathers wraps itself around the light fixture hanging above them and a crack appears in the ceiling as it pulls. Meryl makes a concerned sound next to him, hand tightening around his wrist. 

"Vash!" Wolfwood warns sharply, watching as the lamp wobbles dangerously.

"Just—" Vash grits out through clenched teeth, "—give me a moment."

There's a tearing sound and Wolfwood’s eyes snap back down to see that Vash has made a hole in his right pant leg with his prosthetic. He feels a sudden spike of frustration rise above the jumble of all his other emotions at the idea that he'll have to patch it up later. It's a familiar feeling, one that comes up each time Wolfwood finds another bullet hole in Vash's coat, and he latches onto it like a drowning man, this sense of normalcy among the otherwise wrongness of everything else bringing back some clarity to his thoughts.

Deep breaths. It's just Vash. He may have an eldritch horror sprouting from his back but underneath it, it's still the same Vash that buys doughnuts instead of bullets. The same one that lets children climb all over him like a living playground. The one Wolfwood had leaning into his touch like a content cat mere minutes ago. The very same Vash that keeps getting shot needlessly and whose clothes Wolfwood has to keep patching up. Which he'll have to do again soon, because the idiot has just torn a hole in his pants and will only make it bigger if he continues to twist his metal fingers into the material with such force. 

Wolfwood closes his eyes like Vash has advised them earlier and reaches out for his prosthetic hand. He doesn't think about the flutter of feathers or the flashing lights he can still see behind his eyelids. Instead, he focuses on the cool metal under his palm and the way Vash immediately lets go of his pants to latch onto Wolfwood’s hand instead. His grip is crushing and he welcomes the pain, lets it be another sensation that anchors him to reality.

Meryl shifts next to him and he peeks one eye open to see her take a hold of Vash’s other arm. The three of them sit there in a little circle, holding hands, and Wolfwood almost laughs when it reminds him of the way he and other children would do this exact same thing back at the orphanage to say their prayers before sitting down for a meal. He hasn’t done anything of the kind in years, but in here, for Vash’s sake, Wolfwood tries to recall some of the invocations he’d known by heart back then.

He doubts it’s actually the Man Upstairs that causes it, but after a moment, the death grip on his hand loosens and the cacophony of feathers lowers to a whisper. Slowly, steadily, Vash’s breaths even out and when Wolfwood chances a look, his face has lost the pained grimace and looks more like what he’s used to seeing whenever he communes with other plants. 

He also catches Meryl’s expression in his periphery, and seeing her look past Vash at what’s behind him with more wonder than terror, Wolfwood decides it’s probably safe to look now without losing his mind.

It’s still not pretty by any means; the wing has stopped outright expanding and is shrinking instead. The sight isn’t much better than the alternative, but it is watchable, and it doesn’t seem to cause Vash any active distress, so it’s an improvement, at least. 

Much slower than the initial violent outburst, the limb folds downwards, dark feathers retreating from where they’ve been splayed all over the room, unhooking from the furniture in gentle movements and sliding back to rest above Vash’s shoulder until the thing that hangs there starts resembling more of an actual wing and less a thomas put through a meat grinder. Their glow dims as well, no longer leaving dark spots in Wolfwood’s vision as he looks over them. The limb flares out one last time before it settles and the bright spots against the blue feathers, dark enough to appear almost black, shine like stars against the night sky, countless constellations appearing in the plumage. 

Vash groans in front of them and it’s enough to chase away the last vestiges of discomfort from Wolfwood as he scrambles close to put his hands on his shoulder and steady him before he can fall face first into the floorboards. 

“Woah, there,” Wolfwood says past the lump in his throat. He searches Vash’s eyes which are slowly starting to flutter open. “Needle-noggin? You good?”

Vash makes a vaguely affirmative, albeit tired noise and leans into his side gratefully. Wolfwood wraps his arm around his waist, careful not to make contact with where the wing juts out from below his shoulder blade. It stays half-open above them, making clumsy attempts at folding itself and not having much luck. 

Meryl scoots over to Vash, eyes flashing worriedly from his face to his wing. When she places a gentle hand on his arm he finally looks at them properly with a drowsy smile.

“Told you guys not to look,” he mumbles, head falling to rest on Wolfwood’s shoulder. He sighs when they exchange a look, neither of them sure how to comment on what’s just happened. “‘m sorry. I’m a little out of practice at making it… presentable.”

Meryl winces. “Didn’t you say that the last time this happened was over a century ago?”

“Okay, maybe I’m a lot out of practice.”

“So, that’s…” Wolfwood looks up at the crack spidering away from where the light fixture is attached to the ceiling, “...the default of what it’s supposed to look like, then?”

“This is the default, actually,” Vash hums, motioning to his back with a grimace. “I’m just bad at controlling it.”

A full body tremor wracks through him suddenly, including the wing which shakes above him, individual feathers trembling. Wolfwood brings him closer to his side as Vash wraps his arms around his own chest in clear discomfort. 

Meryl frowns, eyes turning sharp and scanning over the wing. “I’d ask if you knew what could be causing the pain but I’m pretty sure I can see it myself.”

Wolfwood quirks his brow, confused as to what’d warrant her disapproving tone. He cranes his neck to take a proper look at Vash’s wing now that it no longer poses the threat of making his brain melt out of his ears.

The limb still trembles slightly. It looks like a bigger, darker version of a thomas wing. The saddest, most miserable thomas Wolfwood has ever seen in his life that hasn’t preened in years, he notes with a start. Previously it was hard to tell anything concrete about it, but now he can clearly see the bald spots that litter around its entire length, revealing pink, irritated skin. Long flight feathers are missing in places, others are crumpled or broken in half, swaying sadly as the wing moves. The vast majority have chipped vanes while some look discolored, their glowing spots dimmer. And there’s down everywhere; clumped up white fluff that sticks in between feathers and clings to whatever it comes in contact with, including Wolfwood’s shirt where a couple have already fallen off of the limb with its jerking around. 

He plucks some down from his chest and flicks it away. “Christ, Spikey, when was the last time you’ve cleaned this thing?”

Vash winces and presses his face into Wolfwood’s shoulder with a groan. “I don’t know. I haven’t had it fully out in decades—”

“Decades?” Meryl says with alarm from where she’s moved behind Vash to inspect the damage on the back. 

“It takes hours to clean and the process is long and annoying, especially when you have no one to help you with the hard to reach spots,” Vash says, some actual irritation seeping into his words. “I never bring it out, not consciously. And up until yesterday I’ve never felt it as anything worse than just some itch that I can’t really scratch at.”

“Still,” Meryl argues, more worry than reproach this time. “It’s a part of you, you should take better care of it. Or any care, really.”

“Shortie’s right,” Wolfwood says, jabbing a finger into Vash’s side lightly. He squirms a bit, eyes set on the floorboards below.

“It’s just— it’s not worth it,” Vash sighs out miserably. “I don’t like that it’s there, I don’t want to be reminded that it is every other month.”

Wolfwood considers the spots in which feathers have clearly been torn out in handfuls. Curiously enough, they haven’t healed the way the rest of Vash’s body does. “You tried to get rid of it,” he says, a statement, not a question.

Vash slumps into his side, defeated. “Usually it’s just a couple of feathers. I can pluck them out pretty easily.” He chuckles with no humor, “Nothing I can do about this thing, though, not unless I find something sharp— Ow, ow, ow! Joking! I’m joking!”

Wolfwood huffs and extracts himself from Vash who’s rubbing at his ear where he’s pulled on it. He takes a proper look at him, pouting and shoulders hunched up as he sits. Every once in a while he shivers and the wing above his head spasms, flaring out slightly before settling back down to its half-folded hover. Wolfwood catches Meryl’s eye behind Vash, her expression full of concern but her brow set in a way that lets him know she’s already got a plan of action and there isn’t much that can make her back down. She comes back to Vash’s front and kneels so that they’re at eye level. Wolfwood takes that as an opportunity to inspect his wing from the other side.

“You said it’s difficult to handle alone,” Meryl coaxes gently, “does that mean you’ve had people help you with it before?”

Vash hesitates for a second before nodding. “When we were young me and Nai did it for each other. Rem would help us during especially bad molts.” 

Meryl smiles at the softness he talks about the woman with. “Do you think me and Wolfwood can do that for you?” she asks.

“You don’t have to—”

“I think we do, actually,” Wolfwood cuts in from behind Vash, brows furrowed as he takes stock of the mess that is the back of his wing. Aside from showing the same damage he could see from the front, the feathers on his back are especially ragged in the place where the wing bends. Or rather where it's supposed to bend, but where long flight feathers have instead twisted around each other, preventing the limb from folding properly. Wolfwood watches as it tries to close and the feathers catch on each other, causing it to jerk back and return to its half-open position above Vash’s head.

Wolfwood scowls at where Vash is peeking at him over his shoulder, frowning. "I mean, I can take care of it myself—"

"Sure you can," Wolfwood scoffs, unimpressed. He kneels behind Vash and puts one hand on his back, feeling it tense for a second before relaxing, and lets the other hover above his wing. He catches Vash's eye over his shoulder. "Can I?"

Vash watches him for a few moments before nodding jerkily and turning back to hide his face in the crook of Meryl’s neck. She cards her hands through his hair and gives Wolfwood a small, encouraging smile. He lets his fingers brush gently over the dark feathers.

Wolfwood has handled thomas before. He doesn't like riding them, the gymnastics required to steer one while attempting to hold onto the Punisher at the same time aren't worth it, but he's familiar with how to take care of them. They had them at the orphanage and the kids would help with raising the birds, especially when they were still chicks. He has fond memories of sitting in the stables with Livio and petting at their downy backs, wondering how anything in the world could be that soft.

Vash's feathers are nothing like that: ragged and torn, rougher to the touch than healthy ones should be. The wing trembles under his touch, he imagines from the strain of not being able to fold itself. Wolfwood slides his hand to rest at the joint below which the feathers have snagged to steady it. 

"Tell me if I'm hurtin' you," Wolfwood says, suddenly aware of how thin and fragile the bone below his fingers feels.

Vash laughs wetly, face still in Meryl's neck. "You're not. You won't."

He says it with such easy conviction. Wolfwood ignores the little pang in his chest and instead nudges Vash’s wing to flare out a bit more. It does, letting him hold the brunt of its weight as Wolfwood starts tracing his fingers carefully down the length of the snagged feathers, straightening them out as he goes. 

“If you never bring this thing out, how come it’s messed up that badly?” Wolfwood asks, trying to distract himself from the way Vash shakes like a leaf in Meryl’s arms.

“Even if it’s not physically here, it exists within my Gate. Nothing really happens to it in there, though. I think—” Vash lets out a relieved sigh when Wolfwood manages to untangle another one of his flight feathers, some of the tension seeping out of his frame “—I think this might have happened yesterday. I couldn’t close it back then either and spending the entire night with it against the wall probably didn’t help.”

Wolfwood heard Meryl make a concern sound. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I didn’t want to bother you,” Vash murmurs. “And, uh… I was kind of hoping it’d fix itself when it disappeared again.”

Wolfwood maneuvers the last of the feathers back into their proper place. They’re still a bit bent from laying at odd angles for too long but look neat enough to be able to fold. “Alright, try now?” he prompts, letting go of the wing and stepping back to watch.

Vash extracts himself from Meryl, sitting up straight. Wolfwood watches as the muscles in his scarred back flex and the wing extends until it’s fully spread out, the tips of black feathers almost brushing against the ceiling. Then slowly, like he still expects to meet resistance, Vash folds it until it’s tucked neatly against his shoulder blades. 

“Thank you,” he says emphatically, relief clear in his voice. Satisfied with making sure that Vash is no longer in any active pain Wolfwood nods to himself and immediately steps closer to smack him on the head. 

Vash yelps, more surprised than hurt, and shoots him an indignant look. “What was that for?!”

“Bein’ an idiot,” Wolfwood scoffs, glaring down at him. “We talked about this Spikey, you promised you wouldn’t hide injuries from us.”

“Well, yeah—” Vash splutters, “But this is different—”

“Vash,” Meryl interrupts him, looking as done as Wolfwood feels, “I watched you squirm around this entire day, clearly hurt.”

“Hurt is a strong word…” Vash winces and looks away from their disapproving gazes. "I didn’t want you guys seeing this,” he adds lamely, motioning to his shoulder.

Wolfwood drops down to sit next to Meryl again, facing Vash with a sigh. “Needle-noggin, we already know you’re not exactly human—”

“I know—” he says hotly, eyes snapping back to them. He worries at his bottom lip and Wolfwood catches a flash of fang. “But this is different. All the other things, they’re… digestible. They set me apart as other but they’re not outright frightening. This thing—” Vash flares his wing out, causing white down to go flying everywhere and broken feathers to sway with the movement, “—it scares people. Every time it appears they end up more afraid of it than of whatever was trying to hurt them in the first place. It scared Bianca. It scared you.”

Wolfwood feels hot shame swirl in his stomach because Vash isn’t wrong. Fear might be a strong word to call it but his first reaction upon seeing the wing was to flinch away. Based on the way Meryl is looking at her lap guiltily next to him, she had the same initial thought. He tries to say something but the words stick in his throat.

Vash is looking at them helplessly. “I don’t want to scare people,” he says in a whisper. The wing juts out from above him even when folded, making him appear smaller as he hunches his shoulders. 

Wolfwood’s throat still refuses to cooperate so he does the next best thing he can think of and closes the gap between them, arms reaching out. Vash makes a wounded sound when Wolfwood’s hand slides over his nape and pulls him closer until his head is pressed against his shoulder. “C’mere”, he murmurs quietly, urgently, not knowing what to say, what else he could say.

Wolfwood feels a hand twist in the back of his shirt, metal fingers gripping on tightly, hears Vash’s breath hitch as he sneaks his own hand under the folded wing to hold onto his shoulders with just as much strength. He remembers Bianca calling Vash a monster and thinks of the kids back at the orphanage, of Melanie and of the fact that he had plenty of opportunities to visit them but chose not to. He’s too afraid they’d be able to see right through him, that they’d smell the blood on his hands no matter how much time he’s spent trying to scrub it off. 

Wolfwood has no idea how to tell Vash that he gets it, at least partially, he does, and that it doesn’t matter how much of a monster he thinks he might be, because Wolfwood has absolute certainty in the fact that Vash is still ten times the person Wolfwood will ever be. So he holds on to him tighter and hopes it’s enough.

Thankfully, Meryl seems to have the words he lacks. She worms her way in between the two of them, back pressed to Woflwood’s chest as she straddles Vash’s lap with an expression that is half worry and half determination. “Vash?” she prods gently, trying to catch his eye, “Vash, you’re not—”

“Don’t—” he chokes out, shaking his head with his eyes squeezed shut tightly, “Don’t lie to me—”

“Okay,” Meryl says immediately, shushing him. “You don’t want empty platitudes, that’s fine. I won’t give you any.”

“Stryfe.” Wolfwood says warily, hands settling on her shoulders, because while he isn’t a fan of the idea of lying in order to spare his feelings, he also isn’t sure telling Vash that his wing inflicts staggering amounts of existential dread on its observers will help right now.

Meryl just shoots him a look that says don’t interrupt and focuses back on Vash. She cradles his face in her palms, thumbs stroking under his still closed eyes. “Look at me, please?” she asks and after a second he does, blue irises glowing faintly with the plant markings. 

“I’m not going to pretend that seeing your wing before it, um, settles isn’t…” Meryl hesitates, clearly searching for the right word, “...startling.”

“Good one, Shortie,” Wolfwood whispers and she smacks him on the chest without looking back.

“My point being,” Meryl continues, “It doesn’t matter that it is. Yes, it may not be pleasant to look at, but it’s not going to send us running away. Do you know why?”

Vash swallows and shakes his head, eyes wet and big and looking at her like she hung up the moons in the sky.

“Because it changes nothing about you as a person,” Meryl says, voice growing soft. “You’re not doing it on purpose, you’re not trying to scare anyone. But the thing that you do on purpose, deliberately and every single day, is helping people. When we were in that cabin yesterday, I hated having to leave you there, yes, even after seeing your wing, because no matter how afraid I might be of following you somewhere, it will never come even remotely close to how much I care about you.”

Vash’s hands come up to hold onto Meryl’s wrists, watching her with a pained expression. “You shouldn’t have to be afraid in the first place,” he whispers, voice strained.

Wolfwood sighs and rests his chin on top of Meryl’s head. "This ain't about what we have to or don't have to do," he says. "Nobody is forcin' us to do nothin'. We're here because we want to."

“And we want to make sure you’re okay. So, you’re going to show us how to help with your wing and then you’re going to sit back and relax while we take care of you,” Meryl adds with finality.

Vash still looks a bit unsteady where Meryl has his face between her hands but he can’t quite fight back his smile as he searches both her eyes and Wolfwood’s and finds nothing but conviction there. He looks down at Meryl with a shaky laugh. “You can be really stubborn when you want to, you know?”

“Thank you. I have a great role model,” she says, patting his cheek affectionately. 

They untangle themselves from each other until Vash has enough space to unfold his wing and bring it around to his front, passing his fingers along its length with a displeased expression. He flashes his eyes to where Wolfwood and Meryl are watching him closely, curious and eager. 

“Alright,” Vash starts, tone still unsure. “I, uh, haven’t done this in a while. Obviously. But the gist of it is, you’ll want to get rid of any dead feathers you find.” He plucks a dim, ragged one from his wing. It comes out with barely any resistance. Vash discards it carelessly and moves his hand to one of the feathers that hangs down from where the quill has been broken in the middle. “If they’re damaged but don’t come out easily, leave them. When they’re broken like this one—” he snaps off the quill completely with a quick movement before also letting it fall to the ground, “—you can try tearing it off at the break. I can’t feel much below it and they can catch on things or get tangled up with the others, so I’d rather have them out.”

Vash cards his fingers through his feathers quickly, dispassionately, until he finds what looks like a thin spike resting among the fluff closer to the skin. “This is a pin feather,” he explains with a weary sigh. “They’re basically brand new feathers, they have this flimsy veil around them that won’t come off on its own.” He rubs his fingers over the spike gently and it crumbles away immediately, revealing a crumpled, black plume. “They’re the main source of the itching and there’s a lot of them. They’re also the reason why preening can take hours, not to mention the mess,” Vash grumbles, shaking out his hand and his wing, little white flecks raining off of them along with more down. A tuft lands on his nose and he blows it away with a huff. “I usually don’t bother with the down. It sticks to everything and there’s always more, no matter how long you spend trying to fish all of it out.”

“That’s pretty much it,” Vash finishes and folds his wing again, a sour expression on his face. “It’s boring, and messy, and not worth the time that it takes. I’d understand if you guys wanted to back out—”

“Who said anythin’ about backin’ out?” Wolfwood scoffs before Vash can give them any more crap. “Sounds perfectly doable to me. Shortie?”

“We have the rest of the evening and the entire night. Shouldn’t take too long between the two of us,” Meryl says with a resolute nod, inspecting the dead feather Vash has thrown to the ground thoughtfully. “We might need to bring a trash bag, though.”

Once Meryl fetches a trash can from Miss Hawthorne (under the pretense that one of them wanted to do some whittling without leaving their room) she locks the door behind her and they get to work. 

Vash tries to insist that he should help but eventually surrenders himself to wrapping his hands around Wolfwood's back and sitting in between his legs, head resting on his shoulder as Wolfwood cards careful fingers through the front of his wing and Meryl handles the other side. They decide to stay on the ground for the sake of not completely ruining the bed with everything that falls off of Vash.

It’s oddly relaxing. Wolfwood listens to Vash’s slow, steady breaths, hands passing over the black feathers methodically and plucking out any that look dim or damaged. Not many words pass between the three of them aside from the quiet little sorrys and it’s okays whenever Meryl or Wolfwood pull a bit too hard or mistake a healthy feather for a dead one. Vash has his eyes closed, letting out content little sighs as his pin feathers are freed up and occasionally tensing at the sensation of fingers skimming too close to the spots where he’s torn out entire patches off of his wing yesterday. Wolfwood loses himself in the repetitive motion, smiling at the way Vash fluffs out his feathers eagerly each time they get to a particularly itchy spot. 

By the time it starts getting dark outside, (the three of them letting out a collective relieved breath when Meryl flips the light switch and it turns out that the lamp is still working) the trash can is half-full with dark, faintly glowing feathers and Vash is a puddle against Wolfwood. His hands are slung loosely around his shoulders, long legs splayed out in front of him as he dozes off. The metal grate on his chest is digging into Wolfwood’s collarbone and his back is begging him to straighten out from the slouch he’s been in for the past several hours. He ignores it and breaks open another pin feather.

Wolfwood cards his fingers through the fluff close to the skin at the top of Vash’s wing and is rewarded with a pleased hum. He chuckles, does it again and outright grins when he can hear the beginning of a purr kick up somewhere in Vash’s chest as he melts even more into the embrace. 

“Y’know, for all the whinin’ you did earlier about how bad this’ll be, you sure sound like you’re enjoyin’ yourself,” Wolfwood teases, keeping his tone and his fingers light. 

Vash’s head rolls against his shoulder. He grumbles something intelligible and stretches, long limbs splaying out behind Wolfwood. His wing flares out as well, dark feathers on full display; a bit uneven in places where some are missing, broken or have been torn out, a bit sickly, the intensity of their glow irregular along the plumage. But nevertheless, looking much better than when they started. 

Vash’s limbs fall back down against Wolfwood as he finishes stretching and the wing soon follows, fluffing up until the limb appears to be almost twice its original size and then shaking out with fervor, sending down and flecks left over from the pin feathers flying everywhere. Wolfwood hears Meryl sneeze and looks up to see her trying and failing to get the mess out of her hair. 

“You look good with white highlights, Shortie,” he says with a smirk. Meryl’s hands fall down in defeat as she gives up on her attempt to get the down off, shooting him a withering glare that turns into an amused snort when her eyes actually take him in.

“You’re one to talk,” she smirks back, coming around to pluck a piece of fluff out of Wolfwood’s hair and immediately blowing it into his face instead. He huffs and waves his hand at her to stop. It’s not very effective with both his arms still under Vash’s armpits, holding him up as he rumbles contentedly. 

Meryl stops antagonizing him to take a look around their room, hands on her hips. “I think that’s enough for today. I’m afraid that if we go at it any longer, we’re going to bury Miss Hawthrone’s house in this stuff,” she says with a wince, watching as a piece of down floats lazily right in front of her face. She waves it away. “We can air out the place tomorrow morning. Or… Something.”

Wolfwood hums, noncommittal, adjusting Vash on his shoulder so that his sharp chin no longer poses a threat of poking a hole in his throat. “You think this is what snow looked like?” 

“The what now?”

“Snow,” Wolfwood repeats, watching with wonder as the white flecks dance around the room and cover most of… everything, really. “Vash explained it to me once. Apparently, it was somethin’ that happened back on Earth, kind of like a sandstorm but with shredded ice instead of sand.”

“That sounds so weird,” Meryl scrunches up eyebrows in thought. “And cold. I would have loved to see it.”

“Well, this is as close as we’ll ever get, I suppose. Or anyone on this planet.”

“Yeah,” Meryl says with a note of sadness in her tone. 

Before it can settle in the line of her shoulders as well, she leans down next to Wolfwood, getting herself on eye-level with the man who’s currently treating his lap as a personal bed.

“Vash?” she prompts, a hand coming to rest on the side of his face that isn’t pressed into Wolfwood’s shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

He leans into her palm with a sleepy sound. Wolfwood can’t see his expression from this angle but he’s pretty sure there’s a dopey smile on his face based on the way Meryl’s eyes go soft and the purring kicks up a notch. 

“I think that’s plant for ‘pretty fuckin’ good’” he snorts, amused. The rumble in the air is loud enough now that Wolfwood isn’t surprised when he feels the hair on his arms stand on end. Which also means that it should be getting into range noticeable by human ears.

Sure enough, he hears Meryl coo a second later, a delighted smile appearing on her face. She presses a kiss to Vash’s forehead and he makes a noise that would normally be a hum but comes out more like a little mrrp with the warble in his voice. It’s sickeningly endearing.

“Dibs on the first shower,” Meryl says, patting Vash’s cheek one last time before she makes for the door, grabbing the trash can full of feathers as she goes. Wolfwood doesn’t bother arguing, he’s long since gotten used to bathing in what was lukewarm water at best after Vash and Meryl take their turns.

“Alright, Needle-noggin. Let’s get you to bed,” Wolfwood murmurs. Carrying Vash is challenging enough with his long, lanky limbs, but the addition of an extra one makes it nigh impossible. Wolfwood manages to stand up with some effort, holding him up underneath his armpits, Vash's arms still slung over his shoulders. His wing is unfolded, hanging loosely from his back, feather tips brushing against the ground. 

“C’mon Spikey, work with me here,” he grunts out, nudging it with his foot gently. “Fold.” 

Wolfwood does it again and Vash makes a vaguely disturbed noise before the wing rises up to settle against his shoulder. After that he manages to shimmy the two of them close enough to the double bed in the middle of the room to drop Vash unceremoniously down on it. Wolfwood dusts off his hands and finally stretches out his sore muscles with a groan, hearing joints pop into place.

Vash is laying face-down on the bed, covered in white down and flimsy little flecks from his pin feathers, arms wrapped around a pillow and wing half open. He’s still purring up a storm as Wolfwood takes his shoes off. Next goes the holster strapped to his leg. Then Wolfwood comes over to his left side, shaking Vash’s shoulder lightly.

“Gonna take off your arm, that alright?” he asks, hand resting at where metal meets scarred skin, already feeling for the clasps. Vash’s eyes flutter open for a moment and he appears to be at least somewhat coherent because he willingly slides his prosthetic from underneath the pillow and holds it out for Wolfwood. It clicks off with a hiss and Vash goes back to being blissfully dead to the world. 

Wolfwood places his things on the nightstand next to the bed, making sure they’ll be easily visible once Vash wakes up, especially his prosthetic, and then goes to have a smoke by the window. 

By the time he’s finished, Meryl appears back in the room wearing loose sweatpants and a shirt she stole from him months ago, sleeves rolled up several times. She scrunches up her nose when she sees Wolfwood smoking inside and he shoots her an unapologetic grin before putting out his cigarette. He shakes out his head right above Meryl's once she settles into bed next to Vash just to be annoying, making white fluff rain down on her still wet hair and laughs as she throws a pillow at him in retaliation while he retreats. 

Wolfwood enjoys a rare hot shower, scratching at his head and hoping the down won’t clog up the pipes. Once the water starts going cold he gives up on extracting all of it from himself and heads back to their room.

Meryl seems to have lost the fight for trying to extract the blankets from below Vash's sleeping form and is instead using his wing as a substitute. She does look extremely cozy underneath it, hands ghosting over the dark feathers while she lays tucked into his side.

"I think I found a way to deal with Vash's excessive blanket hogging," she smirks at Wolfwood.

He huffs in amusement as he approaches the bed. Without much effort, Wolfwood holds Vash up with one hand and pulls the blankets from under him with the other before settling down on the bed and throwing the covers over the two of them. 

He readjusts Vash’s head on the pillow so that he’s no longer at risk of suffocating in his sleep. Meryl is watching him with a pinch to her brows, fingers tracing the glowing marks in the feathers absentmindedly.

Wolfwood props himself up on his elbow to look at her. "What is it?"

"Hm?"

"I can practically hear you thinkin'. Spit it out, Stryfe."

Meryl smiles but there’s a melancholy twist to her mouth as she asks, “Do you think it’s ever going to get easier for him? Allowing us to help?”

Wolfwood sighs, deep and heavy, and brushes Vash’s hair from his forehead, watching his peaceful, sleeping face. 

“Not a chance.”

Chapter Text

In the morning, the wing is still there.

So is all the down, Vash notes sourly, watching a white tuft float lazily in the air before landing on Meryl’s cheek. He can hardly stay in a bad mood though, not when she scrunches up her nose cutely and burrows her face deeper into the feathers of his wing, still asleep. Vash smiles, stretching out his limbs to the best of his ability while lying on his front and with two other bodies tangled up with his before pulling Meryl closer to him with his wing. He hears Wolfwood grumble something intelligible behind him, feels a nose press to the back of his neck and the arm around his middle tighten, fingers brushing over the tips of his feathers. The sensation makes him shiver and then come to an entirely new realization.

He’s not in pain . 

Vash doesn’t remember the last time he could say that. Between his various scars flaring up, the phantom pain in his arm and the dull ache at his stump that sparks whenever he leaves his prosthetic on for too long (which is more often than not), Vash doesn’t have many moments in his life when something isn’t hurting. And even when these pains subside, he can always feel his wing, tucked tightly within his Gate, too big, too unwieldy, an ever present itch that isn’t painful as much as it is annoying and uncomfortable and that makes it worse, somehow. 

But this morning none of his scars make themselves known, his prosthetic is laying on the bedside table and his wing isn’t confined in his Gate. The only ache it radiates is the satisfying one that comes after a thorough preening. It feels good. Vash feels good . 

Huh. What a novel idea. 

His entire body is loose and relaxed. He has his two favorite people here with him and there is no immediate danger that any of them have to worry about. More than that, they saw his wing in all its horrifying glory and then still decided to climb into bed with him at the end of the day. Meryl is using it as a blanket . Relief blooms in his chest, warm and thick and when Vash feels it spill out of him in a satisfied rumble, he doesn’t bother keeping it down. 

He lets himself stay in bed for a few more minutes, trying to remember the last time he felt this happy. The first two years of his life come to mind, but even those seemingly idyllic memories are bittersweet with everything that followed after. Vash wonders if this, too, will eventually become just a small pocket of bliss that reminds him of something he’s lost. He tries not to get too attached to people, not with the kind of life he has. The way Wolfwood’s hand splays over his waist is a reminder that he’s not all that good at it.

Vash sighs wearily and gets to extracting himself from the tangle of limbs. He doesn’t remember taking a shower yesterday (he doesn’t remember much of anything after Wolfwood and Meryl got their hands on his wing, if he’s being honest), which means he’s probably still covered in down and flecks from his pin feathers. Vash pries Wolfwood’s hand away from his middle and snorts when he turns around with a grumble. Meryl seems similarly unhappy when he removes his wing to fold it against his shoulder. Her eyes squint open before Vash can cover her with a blanket.

“Where are you going?” she slurs sleepily. Vash plucks the piece of down from her cheek and smiles at the confused sound she makes. 

“I want to shower before anyone wakes up.”

Meryl hums, rubbing at her eyes. “Need some help?” she asks, a bit more awake, gaze traveling up to settle on his wing. Vash fights the urge to tuck it even closer to his back.

“I’ll be fine,” he says, taking the blanket he was sleeping under and throwing it over her. “Get some more rest, okay?”

Still hazy with sleep, Meryl murmurs a quiet mhmm and plops back down on the pillow. Vash steps over her and off the bed, feather tips brushing against her arm as he goes. The second his feet touch the floor Meryl scoots over to Wolfwood and latches onto him instead, face pressing into his broad back. 

Vash watches them for a few more moments with a soft smile until another piece of down floats by his eyes. He swipes it away with a huff and goes to open the window in their room, flapping his wing to try and get some of the fluff outside. At least with the place being a thomas ranch they can get away with the room being half covered with the stuff. Hopefully. Vash is banking on the three of them leaving before Miss Hawthorne can start asking any questions.

With the bathroom right outside of where they’re sleeping, he isn’t too worried about someone potentially catching him with his wing out as he crosses the hall. Vash can hear measured breaths all over the house. Even the birds outside are still chirping softly in their sleep. 

The shower is just big enough for Vash to squeeze inside with his wing tucked tightly against his shoulder blades. Still, he takes care to not bump into anything by accident. It's been a while since he’s been used to additional weight at his back. It throws off his balance in a way that makes him stumble as he steps into the cabin; actually, properly trip up, not the intentional clumsiness he puts up for other people to make himself appear harmless. 

Vash manages to catch himself on the wall, saving his face from an unfortunate meeting with the tiles. He shoots an annoyed look at the wing protruding from his shoulder. Over a decade of rigorous training, gone down the drain the second his body remembers it has one more limb to account for.

One that doesn’t do very well in confined spaces, Vash thinks sourly as he tries his best to rinse off his feathers without actually spreading his wing out and using only one hand. Maybe he should have taken Meryl up on her offer to help. 

After some awkward maneuvering, Vash manages to get most of the mess off his body, if not off his wing. He supposes it won’t matter much soon enough, since he entered this bathroom with every intention of leaving it with only three limbs on his person, the way he prefers it. He doesn’t doubt that now that Meryl and Wolfwood know about it he won’t be able to avoid bringing it out, but that’s a problem for future Vash. Present Vash is looking forward to being perfectly human-shaped and wingless again.

As he gets out of the shower and goes to grab for the towel, Vash catches a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror hanging above the bathroom sink. He freezes, taking himself in; the scars marring his skin, the metal holding him together, the barely visible circuits that run all over his body. He can’t say he’s ever been ashamed of any of it. He doesn’t like showing them to others just because he knows most people would find the sight unpleasant, but to him they were reminders. Of those he saved. Of others that he didn’t. Of accidents he couldn’t avoid and of cruelties he didn’t want to. Vash doesn’t regret any of it, nor the hurt it caused him.

But the hulking mass above his shoulder is a different story. Vash spreads his wing out and watches his reflection follow the movements. It drips water on the tiles below his feet and he frowns at the sight, too similar to the way his feathers dissolve whenever they feel too big for his body and start twisting and writhing outwards, as though this part of him has a mind entirely of its own and is as displeased with being attached to him as he is with being reminded that it exists.

Vash has hated this thing for as long as he can remember. He and Nai both have it, a single wing each, sprouting from opposite shoulders, another way in which they are two parts of a whole. But where Vash’s wing is all dark, droopy feathers and ominous blue light, Nai’s is perfectly white, bright spots running evenly down its length, with vanes sharp enough to cut through skin and bone, an extension of his Gate to match the blades his brother was so fond of. 

Rem spent the first couple of weeks after she found the two of them with a blindfold on. As it turned out, the mere sight of their wings as they manifested naturally triggered a visceral flight response in humans, or anything else that wasn’t a plant, really. And physical contact with their feathers at their most… volatile, caused burns severe enough to scar. 

One of Vash’s earliest memories is of sitting in Rem’s lap, holding her fingers with his little hands and asking her why she had white cloth wrapped all over them. She stroked his cheek comfortingly and smiled, saying she burned herself on a stove. Weeks later, Rem helped him calm down after his wing suddenly acted out, her hands leaving his shoulders covered in blisters where the feathers gripped them and Vash realized she had lied to his face. 

Rem never complained. She never said a single bad word about their wings, nor did she ever blame them for hurting or scaring her. Even after months passed and Nai learned how to keep his wing stable while Vash still struggled, finding the limb as unwieldy as everything else that was connected with his Gate, she never as much as implied she was upset with him, loved him any less for it. Because Rem was good and kind and perfect, and everyday Vash wishes he could be anything like her. 

But no matter how hard he tried, how many hours he spent with Nai trying to copy his brother as he manipulated his wing until it looked like those pretty people Rem showed them in books she called angels, Vash could never control it. It felt too large for his small body, spilling out and away from him at random while he sat curled up and waited for it to calm down. He already was a failure for being a plant that couldn’t even create anything, that just took and took and on top of that looking at him made people want to run away, touching him burned them. 

On especially bad days, when his wing wouldn’t settle for hours at a time, Nai would sit with him, preening his feathers even as they writhed and dripped everywhere. His brother was the only person that could see him in that state and not find him repulsing and frightening on instinct. Even Rem, with all her determination and good intentions, wasn’t immune to the effects it had on her. She’d get headaches if she tried to stay around him for too long despite keeping her eyes closed, and Vash preferred sitting alone in his room and waiting it out to seeing the bandages on her arms reaching all the way up her forearms. 

Time went on and he never got much better at controlling his wing. Instead, Vash took on a different strategy. Anytime their wings weren’t out, they were hidden within their Gates, still a part of them but no longer tangible, a sensation at the fringe of your consciousness, a literal phantom limb. Neither of them kept their wing inside their Gate for too long. Even if they didn’t have a physical form anymore, they were still affected by the passage of time, still needed to be preened regularly, and while their natural healing abilities meant the muscles couldn’t quite atrophy like a human’s would, it still wasn’t healthy and led to discomfort at best and pain at worst after only a couple days. 

Vash would force his wing to stay within his Gate for weeks at a time. 

Back when he was with Rem and Nai, they would make him bring it out to take care of it. But then Rem was gone, and he didn’t know who his brother was anymore, and the new people he was staying with had never seen an independent before. 

Weeks turned to months. Months into years. Years into decades and suddenly it’s been a century since Vash has had his wing properly out of his Gate. It sits there, big and uncomfortable and sore. And anytime Vash can feel it spilling through the cracks, he forces it even further in. Before yesterday, he never intended on telling Wolfwood or Meryl about the fact that he has it. 

But the thing about bodies is, they run mostly on instinct. If someone throws a punch your way, you put up your hands. If you trip and fall, you try to catch yourself before you hit the ground. Your body reacts before you’re even aware of the movement and that includes the entirety of your body . 

For Vash, it means that even with his wing pushed as deep into his Gate as he can manage, when there’s a bullet flying straight for his face and all his limbs are already occupied, the only available part of his body springs up to shield him instead. Black feathers, long and winding, grow like vines from his arms and shoulders and chest and everywhere that they need to be to ensure they can grasp at stray bullets and each time it happens before Vash is even aware of his Gate opening up to let them through. 

The result is always the same; people panic. At best, they run away in fear. At worst, they come back with pitchforks and more guns. Either way, Vash knows that the second his wing makes an appearance, he is no longer welcome at whatever place he’s staying at. 

The same thing happened at the cabin. He needed to get to the bullets before they got to Meryl and Bianca, but his legs wouldn’t take him there fast enough. And so, his wing reacted for him, feathers bursting out and joints stacking on top of each other until they could reach. The thugs panicked and ran away. Meryl and Bianca panicked and ran away. Vash was left alone and started tearing the feathers out, the way he always did to get rid of them, except this time they weren’t sprouting from his arms or chest, the clumps came out to reveal pink, bloody skin and new bones (old bones he hasn’t felt in decades) and Vash realized with horror that it wasn’t just feathers this time, it was the entire thing .

The entire, cursed thing, he thinks bitterly as he stares at it in the mirror, large and hulking and still dripping on the floor. Vash fluffs it out and shakes it, getting the water off and folding it again. He comes closer to the sink, gripping it with his hand and breathing out a deep sigh, trying to relax. It always goes easier if he can relax. He closes his eyes. 

Vash thinks of Rem singing as she preens his feathers on a good day (with hands wrapped in bandages), of Nai doing the same for him on a bad one (his wing drips on his brother’s shirt and burns holes through the material). He thinks of Brad and Luida’s scandalized expressions when he admits he hasn’t taken care of his wing in years and they nag at him until he does (they insist on staying, but Brad has to leave for the beginning of it and Luida looks like she really wants to). He thinks of the man whose child he saved from a stray bullet by catching it with his feather (he throws the first rock when they stone him later). 

Vash thinks of Bianca’s awestruck expression as she traces glowing patterns on his skin (her terrified expression as she scrambles away from him). He thinks of Wolfwood’s arms crushing him in a hug (the way he flinches away as one of his feathers skims over his skin). He thinks of Meryl holding his face in his hands, gentle and soft as she tells him that he’s good and she cares and she won’t leave (there’s a tremble to her voice he recognizes as fear).

Finally, Vash thinks of gentle hands on his feathers, of soothing words and of warm bodies in the bed next to him. He imagines his wing folding in on itself until it disappears, and for once in his life it doesn’t fight back as it goes, doesn’t hurt as it’s being forced back into the confines of his Gate. It settles there, radiating relief and a satisfying sort of ache.

When Vash opens his eyes again, the wing is gone. His reflection stares back at him, mouth twisted in a way that could almost be called a smile.

Vash dries off, dresses and pads back to their room. His wing may be gone but he still feels unsteady, thrown off balance as old instincts urge him to run run run now that someone has seen. 

He stands at the foot of the bed, eyes sliding right over where Meryl is still plastered to Wolfwood’s back and zoning in on the bedside table, to his prosthetic and his holster. His gun is on the other side of the room, coat slung over the loveseat, traveling bag near the door, right next to the Punisher, opposite of the open window (roughly 3 meters down, he can easily jump out). It would take him less than a minute to gather his things and get to the stables, a couple more to saddle one of the birds but he could do bareback, go just far enough to make sure no one would be able to track him (send the thomas back, wouldn’t want to steal from Miss Hawthorne), camp out in a cave until they gave up looking. When was the last time he ate? He could do without food for three days, more if he’s desperate, water would be more of a problem but he could—

“The hell are you doin’?”

Vash blinks, contingency plan crashing to a sudden stop as Wolfwood looks up at him with bleary eyes, propped up on an elbow. His hair is sticking up at odd angles from the pillow.

Vash opens his mouth but nothing comes out. He feels frozen in place, pinned down by Wolfwood’s gaze because he knows , his wing isn’t there but he’s vividly aware of it fluttering inside his Gate, reacting to his own panic, and Wolfwood has seen it, nothing good ever happens after people see.

Vash keeps his face carefully blank but there must be something in his expression that is telling because Wolfwood's eyes go soft around the corners. He holds out his arm in a silent invitation. 

“C’mere,” he says, low and soothing. Vash hesitates, watching for any traces of fear or discomfort but all he gets is Wolfwood gesturing at him impatiently to hurry up. He huffs out a breath, some of the tension bleeding out of him and slowly, slowly crawls into bed next to him. 

Wolfwood wraps one arm around his shoulders and brings him close, the other coming to rest at his nape. Vash presses his face to his chest and closes his eyes, gradually relaxing as he counts the heartbeats. Steady and strong, almost in sync with Meryl’s who's at his back. 

Calloused fingers scratch lightly at the fine hair on Vash’s nape. The pressure is distracting, grounding, and he feels a note of satisfaction among all the other jumbled up emotions that wind themselves in his chest; Wolfwood only ever gets calluses when he doesn’t have to take the drugs for weeks at a time. Otherwise his skin smoothes out alongside whatever injury they were originally meant to heal. Warm, rough hands are a sign of things being good — calm and quiet and uneventful. Or at least they're a prize Vash gets to enjoy after he takes a bullet that was meant for Wolfwood.

He does so now, as Wolfwood’s hand splays over his shoulder where his wing was not too long ago. 

“Got rid of it, huh.” A statement, not a question.

“Hid it,” Vash mumbles, fingers tracing idle patterns on tan skin. “Went easier than usual.”

Wolfwood hums in acknowledgement, the sound rumbling in his chest. “Wanna talk about it?”

Vash laughs weakly. "No."

“Yeah, I figured as much,” Wolfwood sighs and lets it go. His arm tightens around him and Vash feels lips press against his hairline. The hand at his nape fists itself in his hair, firm but gentle, holding him steady, and the knot in his stomach gradually unwinds. 

They spend the rest of the morning in bed. Anytime Vash's thoughts start straying and his body urges him to escape, there’s a hand ready to press him back down into the mattress, a mouth with a reassuring word already at the tip of the tongue. He breathes out his shaky gratitudes, unused and unfamiliar with people asking him to stay, wanting him to. He lets himself be pampered until he’s trembling with it and Meryl has to kiss the tears from the corners of his eyes.

By the time Miss Hawthorne calls them down for breakfast, Vash still doesn’t feel human, the way he manages to pretend to do sometimes, but he doesn’t feel like whatever he is has to nestle in some dark corner away from everybody for the fear of hurting or getting hurt. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing, and when Bianca greets him at the kitchen table with a wide smile Vash starts to believe that it might even be enough.

“So,” Roberto starts, throwing the last of their bags into the trunk and slamming it closed. “You brats kept out of trouble?”

“Been on our best behavior,” Wolfwood drawls from where he’s strapping the Punisher to the roof of the car. 

Roberto looks doubtful. “Sure.” 

“Do you really have that little faith in us?” Meryl asks with a pout. She’s already in the driver seat, adjusting it to suit her much shorter legs. 

“You have something of a track record.” 

“They’ve been nothing but helpful, I assure you,” Miss Hawthorne says with a smile. She came out of the house to see them off properly when Roberto first arrived. “Wonderful with the kids, too,” she adds, looking over to where Vash has Bianca on his shoulders and is chasing around Percy, both of them laughing in delight. He’s doing his best impression of bug noises, at the girl’s request.

“At least that checks out,” Roberto snorts, watching as Vash falls lightly to the ground when the siblings get bored of their current game and decide to join forces to take him on instead. “Oi, kid! We have places to be, if you’re all done playing around.”

“Sorry, Roberto, but I can’t,” Vash puts on a frail, punched out voice as Bianca sits on his chest and Percy straddles his legs. “I’m afraid I’ve been incapacitated.”

“Well, capacitate yourself before we leave without you.” 

"Come now, you two, that's enough." Miss Hawthorne chuckles, coming up to Vash and scooping Bianca up from his chest. She gives Percy a stern look and the boy gets up as well, his disappointed expression mirroring the one on his sister's face. 

"Can't we have five more minutes?" Bianca asks hopefully from where she's perched in her mother's arms.  

"You've already antagonized the poor man for long enough." Miss Hawthorne shoots Vash an apologetic glance. "Besides," she addresses Bianca conspiratorially, voice turning into a whisper. "Didn't you have something for Mr. Vash, sweet pea?"

The girl's eyes light up and she scurries back inside the house after Miss Hawthorne lets her down. Vash watches her go curiously but is soon distracted by the rest of her family bidding them their farewells. Miss Hawthorne gifts them home-cooked food for the road, pressing an especially hefty looking bag into his hands ("I don't like how skinny you are, sweetheart."). Vash ruffles Percy's hair and makes a promise to bring him back some actual tools for his tinkering the next time he visits. He really hopes he will be able to keep it.

While Wolfwood and Meryl come up for their own round of goodbyes, Vash hears a familiar voice call out to him from the front porch. He smiles and leaves the others to huddle behind the white railing at the top of the stairs where Bianca is crouched with all the covertness of an eight-year-old.

"Hi there," he says and is immediately hushed with a stern look.

"You have to be quiet. You said not to tell anyone about you being a bug so I made sure to keep this super secret when I was making it."

Vash feels a pang of anxiety at the mention of it . He doesn't doubt that Bianca wouldn't rat him out on purpose, but she's just a kid and kids slip up. His eyes fleet momentarily to where her family is standing, smiling and relaxed. Do they know? Miss Hawthorne was the one to remind Bianca about whatever she is about to give him in the first place. Vash looks back to the girl, expression schooled into an easy smile. 

"Thank you, I really appreciate it." He pats her on the head and Bianca nods at him resolutely, all business. Gods, he’s going to miss this kid.

The girl gives one last cursory glance to make sure that no one is watching them and then reaches into the wide pocket at the front of her overalls. She brings out a sheet of paper, folded neatly in half. Vash recognizes it as the same type that he’s seen in the notebook Percy uses for sketching out his inventions. 

“Here. I’m much better at drawing bugs than people, but I tried my best,” Bianca says, handing it to him. She kicks at the ground bashfully as Vash takes it from her and carefully unfolds it, not sure if he’s excited or afraid of what he’ll see inside.

It’s a drawing of a person in a bright red coat, big orange glasses and with a mop of spiky blonde hair. It’s him , a wide crayon smile on his face. It’s a bit crude and the colors spill out of the lines in several places, but it’s clearly been made with a lot of love and care. It feels like the polar opposite of the caricatures Vash has seen of his person in some of the newspapers, even if the skill level of both artists is comparable. 

But what really gets him, what makes Vash’s fingers press into the paper until it crumples, is that right above his shoulder is a big, black swirl of what he assumes are supposed to be feathers with bright blue splashes dotted on top of it. His face is covered in white lines that clearly took a lot of effort to keep them (mostly) even. Bianca’s rendition of both his wing and his plant markings was done with as much love and affection as the rest of the drawing.

Vash feels a sting in his eyes. His throat is tight with an emotion he can’t quite place, seeing some of his most inhuman features portrayed with such simple adoration. He blinks away the tears that threaten to spill and smiles at Bianca warmly.

“You drew this?” he asks, grins even wider when the girl gives him a shy nod. “It looks amazing! You have some real talent. And, um, what is this part supposed to be…?” he points to a green line in the picture.

“A tail,” she explains. “It’s cool, isn’t it?”

Vash laughs. “The coolest .”

Bianca lights up at the praise, hands grabbing at his knees excitedly where Vash is crouching in front of her. “You can keep it. So that you don’t forget to visit.” She sways back and forth on the balls of her feet.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Vash chuckles and folds the paper in half again before stashing it in his coat, making sure not to crumple it. “Thank you, Bianca. This is… It means more to me than you know.”

“Good,” the girl says, clearly satisfied with his reception of her gift. “Now you have to come back soon and bring me something nice, too.”

“Is that how it works?” Vash asks and is answered with a vehement nod. “Well, I’m not sure when I will be able to visit again, but I might have something to tide you over for now. How does that sound?”

“A present?” Bianca asks eagerly.

“More like a… memento, to remember me by,” he smiles. 

“What is it?” 

Vash looks behind him to make sure no one is paying them any attention before taking off the glove from his good hand and holding it in front of Bianca, palm up. She stares at it for a moment and then at him, quizzical. 

Vash licks his lips, a pang of nerves going through him. He can feel his wing ripple within his Gate as he prepares for what he’s about to do, the eager look on Bianca’s face spurring him on. This might be a stupid idea, but it’s also the most confident he’s felt about anything concerning his Gate in decades, and for once that part of him feels like it’s going to cooperate.

Vash feels his wing prod gently at the barrier that separates his Gate from their dimension. He opens the smallest possible passage for it to slip through, centering it near his wrist. Plant markings light up weakly on his hand, and then, right in the middle of his palm, a single feather sprouts. It sways in a non-existent breeze, bright blue spots shining against the dark plume.

Vash snaps his Gate shut the second it’s formed properly and flashes a somewhat shaky smile at Bianca, who is absolutely enraptured by the display. Her eyes jump from the feather to him and back again. 

“How’d you do that?” she asks loudly and Vash pats her shoulder with a nervous chuckle to calm her down, conscious of the way Meryl’s head snaps to look at them. He shifts to make sure his hand isn’t visible and brings a finger of his prosthetic hand to his lips, looking at the girl meaningfully.

“It’s a secret.”

Bianca nods in understanding, expression dead-serious. Vash carefully plucks the feather from his palm, feeling a pinprick of pain as the nerves are cut. He hands it to her with a smile.

“For me?” she asks, eyes big and sparkling. When Vash nods she takes it, holding onto it gently, as though she’s scared it will crumble to dust if gripped too tightly. With the same amount of care, she puts it inside the pocket of her overalls and then immediately launches herself at Vash’s neck, hugging him with a surprising amount of force. 

He laughs, hugging her back. “I assume you like it, then?” he asks and feels her nod against his shoulder. “I’m glad.”

“Oi! Spikey!” Wolfwood shouts at him from where the rest of his friends are already inside the car, waiting for him. “Hurry up, we’re runnin’ out of daylight here.”

“Coming!” Vash yells back and hoists Bianca up in his arms which earns him a delighted giggle. He comes over to where her mother and brother are standing near the car and deposits her into Miss Hawthorn’s waiting hands. The woman fusses with her hair for a second and then puts her back on the ground, giving her and Percy a gentle shove towards the house. “You two run along now.” 

Once the children wave their last goodbyes at Vash, Miss Hawthorne turns to him with a more somber expression, one hand coming up to rest on his shoulder.

“If you’re ever in the area and need a place to stay, don’t hesitate to visit.” she says earnestly. “Especially if it's the law you need shelter from.”

Vash freezes. “Ah. So then— this entire time…”

“Sweetheart, no one comes around these parts unless they have someone after their heads.” The hand on his shoulder squeezes. After a second Miss Hawthorne adds with a mischievous glint in her eyes, “And I do venture into the city every once in a while. Hard to forget your pretty face when I can see it on every other wall I pass. With a whole lot of zeroes right underneath it, too.”

“Right,” Vash smiles sheepishly. “Sorry.”

The woman laughs, loud and startled. “What are you apologizing for, love? Saving my daughter, or entertaining my children?” She shakes her head, giving him one more pat on the shoulder and a light shove towards the car. “You’re alright in my book, Vash the Stampede. Keep yourself and yours safe, won’t you?”

“Yes ma’am,” he says with a lazy salute and one last wave as Wolfwood pulls him into the backseat impatiently. 

The truck rumbles to life and then they’re moving, the small town disappearing fast on the horizon behind them. Roberto shoots Vash a suspicious look in the rearview mirror.

“So, the three of you dolts really managed to sit on your asses without stirring any trouble for two days straight?”

“Yup,” Wolfwood drawls, looking through the window disinterestedly.

“Mhmm,” Meryl adds, eyes never leaving the road.

Vash smiles. He loves them both, so much. 

Roberto scoffs, crossing his arms and addressing him. “What the hell did you even get up to, then?”

“Oh, you know,” Vash thumbs at the drawing still stashed in the pocket of his coat, feeling lighter than he has in years. “Same old.”